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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



"CHE t; 



ALSO OTHER WRITINGS, 




Illustrations by Walter Jack Duncan. 



A MEMORIAL FROM HIS PARENTS. 



NEW YORK. 






31230 



Dedicated 



To His Class of '99, 



Central High School. 



Philadelphia, Pa. 



^Vko et'^'''" 



1 1899 ]\ 



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Copyrighted 1899, by John Jack. 



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At the age of 12. 
3 



PREFACE. 



It is very evident from the fragmentary matter from which this pater- 
nal tribute to a loving and dutiful son is compiled, in the special section 
wherein only a portion left by him is devoted, that both the youth's mind 
and ambition tended toward literary work, his evident objective step- 
ping-stone being newspaper, or as it is termed by some, "journalistic" 
employment. That this is true can be discerned throughout. He had laid 
out a unique plan of his own, and the brief sketches, "Chats with My 
Friend the Brahmin," and the story of "Ohet on the Expounder," demon- 
strate, in addition to the extraordinary literary merit of all of his writings, 
the style and school of discipline he had set for himself as a standard and 
a guide ; from them can be seen that he was no ordinary, humdrum, hanim- 
scarum boy, but that he was the happy possessor of an intellect that was 
surprisingly mature for one of his age. Method seems to have been his 
guiding star, and this work will prove of great value in many directions, 
but in one it will be priceless, and that is as an example for all boys of his 
age, and even older or younger, to emulate him in everything, but partic- 
ularly in method. 

There is no one of even moderate intelligence, especially those who 
knew him and those who peruse these pages, who can help but say or 
think that a genius was lost to the world and to humanity by his sad, un- 
timely, and tragic taking off. 

One great regret of his grief -stricken parents is the absence of many 
of his writings from the present compilation. 

Among the missing manuscripts are two volumes of "Chats with My 
Friend the Brahmin," whose contents comprised in each volume more 
than double as much matter as that contained in number one, herein pub- 
lished. Aside from the literary excellence of this product, as exhibited in 
volume one, the missing volumes are a direct loss to those desirous of 
acquiring knowledge of that great Empire of India, of which, compara- 
tively speaking, so little is really known. His father, Mr. John Jack, who 
has been one of the great travelers of the globe, and who had read them, 
says: "That they were marvelous in the line of intelligence about the 
entire history of India, and really encompassed more in their scope than 
anything he had ever read about that still unexplored region of the earth.'' 
This he expresses with a becom\ng modesty, as befitting a doting pare n 
when speaking of his loving and sacrificed boy. t> 

HUGH COYLE, Compiler- 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PREFACE 5 

OHET, A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

CHAP. I. Chet, the Expected 9 

CHAP. n. Chet, the Arrived 20 

CHAP . Ill . At the Office of the Daily Expounder 83 

CHAP. rv. Chefs Impression of Zodgeton 41 

CHAP. V. The New Reporter on the Expounder 50 

CHAP. VI . Chet in His Official Capacity at the Barbecue 57 

CHAP. VII. News and Events of the Next Day . 71 

CHAT WITH MY FRIEND THE BRAHMIN. 

INTRODUCTION 85 

CHAT I. Telang Discourses on Conquerors 88 

CHAT II. Compai-ison of the Art of India axid that of the Outer 

Civilized World 94 

CHAT III 96 

CHAT IV 99 



Miscellaneous Writings 102 

Memorial Services and Newspaper Tributes to the Memory of Arthur 
Firmin Jack : 119 



Biographical 141 

Mimicipal Responsibility for Accidents 152 

Historical 171 

6 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Arthur Firm in Jack, aged 12 years 3 

Aantie "Ohly"— "The Sun was showing off partickerly mighty" 8 

Arrival of Chet at his Uncle's Mansion 23 

Ohet slipped his hand into his trousers pocket 31 

Off they went together and overhauled the "fahm" 84 

Ohet is introduced by his Uncle to Bosbyshell, editor of the Daily 

Expounder 36 

Ohet's Uncle introduces him to the Sheriff 43 

The Prize Spitter 44 

"Ah ! Squire Yorde, how are we?" 48 

Then continued a whispered, disjointed conversation 51 

Starting for the "Cue" 58 

Georgia is the State for "One" 61 

Ambitious Principals who preached themselves hoarse on politics 63 

An Alarm of Fire. "Daily Outcry" office in flames 75 

Row in the "Daily Expounder" office between staffs of the rival papers 77 

Purushotam Rao Telang 83 

Arthur Firmin Jack, aged 9 months 143 

Arthur Firmin Jack, aged 16 months 153 

Arthur Firmin Jack, aged 11 years 157 

Captain John Jack 161 

Annie Firmin Jack 167 











AUNTIK "CHLY:" "the SUN WAS SHOWIN* OFF PARTICKERLY MIGHTY. 



CHAPTER L 



**CHET, THE EXPECTED." 

It was a blazing hot day, sultry and intolerable even in the shade, 
that was the usher in of the on-coming summer that promised to be 
up to the famed and Northern feared standard of torridity, which 
the South of a few years past had held up to the "No'th'n" folks as a 
standing punishment if they dared to invade the heart of their South- 
ern territory and maintain their footing. Their dare to encroach 
upon their soil was snapped up by the "boys in blue," but when the 
soldiers in gray were forced to retreat before the triumphant invaders, 
the encroachers found a climate as well as a people to battle against, 
and both were frightful to face. 

The "No'th'ners" suffered the full penalty of their intrusion, when 
old Sol came out in his annual glory, and by the time the summer 
season was nearly over the "Yanlis" found they had suffered more 
by Sol's rays than they had by "Reb" bullets, which, as a rule were 
not scarce, and uncomfortably sure, from the fact of the gunners' 
long practical experience in private, as well as military life. 

The war of "secesh" was over now, the "reconstruction period" 
had commenced vaporally in earnest, but in every way commenced 
slowly. The Southerners had been "licked" in substantial strength, 
yet their omnipotent sectional ire remained, less formidable, but a 
thousandfold stronger in deep-rooted bitterness. All the South, every 
man, every woman, every babe had suffered for and with the "Lost 
Cause," but they went down with it conscious of their earned respect 
as fighters, or, as they would have it, "defenders." 

The sun was out to stay in this day in question, and he was "show- 
in' off pertickerly mighty," as Aunt Chlydie ("Chly"), of "Jedge Hus- 
ton's plantation," expressed herself. She knew, for she was the aunty 
of all aunties, of all the plantations around ("for the Hustons" was 
"reckoned" one of the finest if not the best plantation in the district, 
though not the largest or most valuable of all by any means). 

The Huston plantation, like nearly all others, was old and In ante- 
bellum times was the home or "center" of several others. It had' 



10 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

grown by accretion from a moderate size strip of land owned by the 
"fust Huston," until it became immense, and controlled, or, was con- 
nected with numerous others by monetary and family ties. But the 
war broke up everything, and with it the happiness of the plantation, 
as it had thousands of others. The family contentment in "the center" 
had been virtually brolien up before the war-cloud burst, but the 
stern Northern invaders completed the disruption of the family, and 
ruined it nearly beyond repair, financially. 

Major Owle, who had owned a good sized plantation adjoining on 
the North, had been killed at Fair Oaks, and with him fell his two 
sons and nephew. Owle was a brother-in-law of the Hustons; his 
wife died from privations and a broken heart. The house and land 
had been swept away by overpowering debts, contracted in aiding 
their Confederacy, whom every Southerner had looked upon as a per- 
sonal ward. The daughter of the Owles "Miss Emily," a delicate, 
quiet girl, was now under the personal protection of her uncle, Judge 
Huston, who had the rare distinction of being a judge in reality, as 
well as in characteristics (which latter generally brought the Southern- 
er his title, the reason there was never a dearth of "titled" personages 
in the South.) 

Another family connection, I might mention, who, like the Owles, 
had "gone down," were the Dabwellows, who owned a fair-sized plan- 
tation on the South of the Hustons. 

Old Dabwellow and his only son had died in the war. Dabwellow 
senior at Antietam, and Dabwellow junior from the effect of hard- 
ships and wounds received "'round Richmond." He was a hearty, 
brave young fellow, always on the qui vive, always for the fight, and 
never satisfied, no matter how "big the booming was," as he phrased 
a battle in a letter to his sponsor. Judge Huston. He fortunately had 
no mother or sisters to mourn his loss, but the Hustons grieved in 
their stead, for he was a "bright an' loving youngster" the Judge 
would eternally remark. He was the greatest personal loss the Hus- 
tons were called upon to suffer in the course of strife, and the deatli 
cast a terrible, extra shadow on their many bereavements. 

The Bawne plantation, bounding the Huston's on the west, was 
owned by another family connection. Several of the Bawnes had 
married members of the Huston household. Franklin Bawne was 
a lieutenant-colonel in a Georgia regiment, he had lost his life in a 
desperate but vain charge in battle. William Bawne gave his life for 
the cause, and his brother Jefferson had been crippled permanently 
in a raid; he died a year and a half after the conclusion of the Civil 
Belligerency. The women folks and two young Bawnes, Thomas and 
Edward, now "run the plantation" under the counsel, really the super- 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. H 

Tision, of Judge Huston, who might be termed a "small father of 
his country." 

There are any number of Huston connections of more or less close- 
ness, but more widely separated, who had suffered, likewise. Among 
them, the Xaviers, reduced to "white trash" by the deaths of the most 
worthy and promising heads of the family, and the swallowing up 
of their estates; of course, the "white trash" remnants are not consid- 
ered Xaviers by the family connections, but although they are a 
worthless, shiftless lot, they bear the name and sport the fame of their 
noble ancestors. No one could deny them the right to do this. But it 
was galling to the Hustons to have under their very noses these "peo- 
ple" who depreciated the family standing and motto "Proud and Fair." 

I will not go into a dissertation on the family misfortunes, the 
chronicling of which could evoke no special interest. Suffice to say, 
the Huston household consisted of the father, Judge Huston, his wife 
and daughter, Katherine, and his ward (but more properly adopted 
daughter, as he felt a thorough parental love for her) Emily Vanard 
Owle. 

To-day, all were out on the broad piazza of the old mansion; old 
it was, ragged too, and a veteran of the past; it had passed through 
many special glories, short-lived and long-lived. To-day it would 
be a melancholy artist, who would be exceedingly captured with its 
beauty; but it has beauty, and perhaps on second thought our senti- 
mental vein would place us liable to its attractive power, but then 
it would be the artistic effect of the climbing jessamine and the honey- 
suckle clinging to the lattice on the w hite wooden Doric colonnades of 
the structure, the horse chestnut trees shading it, the old garden in 
the foreground, intersected by three uneven, and two of them undu- 
lating paths that led down to the old grassy lane, it in turn shaded on 
the Huston side by a number of pleasant broad leaved Ailanthus trees, 
which were faithful protectors, braving steadfastly wind, storm and the 
most penetrating sun, so that the occasional wayfarer, on a day like this, 
might remember when he passed the "Judge's" he had been perfectly 
shielded for a few moments, and that these natural friends had re- 
freshed and reinvigorated his weltering anatomy by their intervention 
between him and the summer "baker." 

At a spot a little further down is the "junction" where the turn- 
pike diverges into two roads the Huston grounds are fenced in in 
the immediate front, by a neat white-washed fence in harmony with 
the white edifice in the background, but the outlying fencing was pro- 
verbially Southern, picketless, torn down and semi-whitewashed; but 
this only added quaintness and naturalness (if possible) to our scene. 



12 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

provided we "take" to the really "played-out" surroundings in this senti- 
mentally poetic view. 

The unpoetic mind, however, would likely fail to appreciate the 
typical scene, because of its lack of glaring beauty, or because of the 
numbers of such sights to be seen at the time, the latter mostly the 
cause, for nearly all are at first entranced body and soul. 

The Judge, who was seated in the middle of the piazza, was en- 
sconced in a huge and comfortable arm chair (an honored heirloom and 
relic of the good old days) squarely facing the intermediate and largest 
of the three ancient paths of the old wooden mansion. His view of 
the surrounding country was simply sublime. He could see, from the 
rather elevated position of his residence, the spires of the town's 
staunch and haughtily built churches, the tower of the Town Hall, 
and, in brief, obtained a half bird's-eye view of Zodgeton. 

The Judge was not a fat man in the general sense of the term, but 
we must confess he had the indication of a corporation, that might 
grow, by a sufficient amount of idle cultivation, to such a degree as 
to evoke the loud admiration of the obesity admiring Chinaman, but 
this is speculation. Although the Judge was portly, his cheery, bronzed 
face was devoid of the usual flabbiness of stoutness (mind me, I have 
no grudge against corpulence). Take the Judge all in all, he had 
picked up during the short space "since the wah," the furrows of 
those past exciting times, the cares of weighty dependencies had, 
nevertheless, left their stamp on his high broad brow, but they, like 
those of his amiable wife, beside him, were the scars, the disfigure- 
ments—no, the life-lasting print of their combined anxiety and strug- 
gle for the honorable sustenance of themselves and national princi- 
ples. Both husband and wife had been reduced in physical stamina 
by the trying efforts of the past, but both kept up, the wife gayly 
and the husband cheerily, and, as he enthusiastically vouchsafed, he 
was "hearty as a buck and fresh as a four-year-old." He had a happy, 
redundant disposition, not by any means boisterous, but always quietly 
enjoying himself and others, as they themselves were pleased by his 
straightforward, honest way. He had resolved since the war, to throw 
off his cares (an effort so seldom made by the ruined planters during 
this period), and, if they permitted him, after his efforts, to remain 
peaceful and contented. So far he had been eminently successful, 
and everyone of his unhappy, miserable neighbors and friends, mar- 
veled at his equanimity of joyful temperament under the appalling 
strains of work he went through in a determined effort to retrieve 
his fortunes, his laurels, he said, rightly, w^ould never need retrieving. 

Mending a fortune is often harder than building one, so the Judge 
found it. He had accepted a Justice of the Peaceship as much for 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. I3 

the good of his much-attached community as for the small income he 
derived from it. He had been offered more esteemed and larger 
revenue-yielding State positions, and had firmly declined them. He 
wouldn't dabble in politics— "it was against his peaceful doctrine of 
life." Huston was an ardent scholar in his young days, and his study 
of law was his standby, for his practice was now both extended and 
esteemed (naturally, consequently, high-priced). He was charitable, 
as all true Southerners are, rich or poor, but he also believed that 
charity begins at home, and followed this branch of the law of charity 
accordingly. It is foundationally declared and presumed, that good- 
ness of character is evidenced in the face, no matter how homely the 
owner's physiognomy may be (a good person's face can never be ugly, 
though it may be homely, denote the distinction. I believe in this 
myself). The Judge's broad face betoliened all his pure brain dictated, 
for even his angled nose had a beaming tip that matched his twink- 
ling gray eyes, that snapped slowly under bushy auburn eyebrows. 
He was dressed, Southern planter fashion, in a light spotlessly clean linen 
suit, and beside his chair lay an expensive and imposing panama hat. 
From the Judge's mouth was issuing a wreath of tobacco smoke, which 
he watched intently and silently curl upwards into minor clouds as- 
cending to join the mammoth celestial ones, that one could not see in 
the clear sky above. The Judge was supremely happy, for three 
months ago, he had succeeded in paying off the last debt against his 
family name, a feat, indeed, for it had been accomplished in a penni- 
less country inhabited by a people in consummate apathy, but he had 
forgotten his Southern languor in his desire to be free from fiscal 
incumbrances, and had, unconsciously, emulated energetically, his 
Northern brother (for whom, in spite of his innate benevolence and 
usual fairmindedness, he had a wholesome dislike, though not the abom- 
ination then prevalent among the Southerners). 

The Judge was quiet— he generally was— and, as the day was 
making the "thermometer perspire," he was not anxious to start out 
of his silent mood, but he did. His splendid meerschaum contained the 
choicest of choice Southern weed, and the odor of the narcotic would 
make the most resolute smoker's mouth water, but his wife was an 
abstainer, who, poor woman, as she stepped lightly from her chair 
to arrange a "hunch" of the Judge's collar, received a full-fledged 
whiff of the "horrid stuff," which occasioned a severe coughing spell. 
Immediately the Judge jumped up, threw his usually carefully handled 
pipe on the flooring, and stepped quickly to his wife's side, tenderly 
seating her in her chair, looking in her face anxiously with concern 
for his thoughtlessness; she gave him a sweet smile and softly said in 
a somewhat choked voice, "I'm all right, dear." 



14 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"Well, I'm mightily careless, not to know yo' were back of me," 
he said with a look of relief. The two girls, Miss Emily and auburn- 
haired Katherine— "Miss Reddy," as her girl friends called her in 
pique, had crowded around their mother, as quickly and as anxiously 
as the Judge had. Miss Katherine now said, grievously, "Paw, yo're 
a real nuisance with that nasty old pipe that yo' take such a pride in. 
Yo' know ma's lungs aren't strong, why don't you quit smokin'? Yo're 
old tobacco even bothers my lungs, which aren't at all delicate." 

"Well, dearie," said the Judge, smilingly, "the pipe's a solace to me 
an' a menace to you; that's the reason I'm always smoking, as you 
declare I am." 

The Judge chuckled, Mrs. Huston smiled, as did Miss Emily; and 
Miss Katherine stepped over to her father and slapped him on the 
back, saying, "Yo're too smart, Mr. Judge." 

The Judge chuckled more than ever, sat down in his chair slowly, 
and the girls nestled on the piazza steps in front of him. After a 
brief quiet, the thoughtful Emily asked languidly, "Uncle, he's comin' 
to-day, ain't he?" 

"Yes," said the Judge, rather drawlingly, "Chet telegraphed he'd 
arrive to-day. He ought to be here in two hours, if the slow old train 
don't give out unusual bad. We'll give him a good reception, won't 
we, eh?" 

"Yes, indeed," answered Mrs. Huston warmly, and the girls strong- 
ly chorused her. "Aunty Ohly promised a splendid dinner, and we've 
fixed his room up homelike for him. I hope he's a nice young fellow." 

The Judge took a few whiffs, slowly, as all looked askantly at 
him. "Well," he deliberately replied to this half question, "he writes 
good-heartedly. and he ought to be, for his mother was as sweet- 
tempered a girl as ever lived, she was foolish, though, awfully foolish! 
She fell in love," his voice changed into a slightly harsher key, "a 
half No'th'ner, but he, poor fellow," his voice went down softly, "tried 
to make amends for his breeding an' standing, by assimilating with 
So'th'n life, but he didn't bolt his original ideas to gain our favor." 

"Was he a rank Yankee?" asked Katherine quizzically and con- 
temptuously. 

"No-o-o," replied the Judge, "he was a strange mixture. He was 
born and early rear'd in Maine, and when a youth, traveled West, 
where he lived a spell, and then came down to Tennessee, where he 
was an editor an' part owner of a paper in a town in this State." 

The Judge now lapsed into silence after thus unsatisfactorily an- 
swering the query. 

"But, Paw. Did he want to free the niggers, was he a black abol- 
itionist?" 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 15 

"Oh, no!" replied the pensive father, with a chuckling shake of his 
head and shrug of his shoulders. "He was, as I said, a strange mix- 
ture. More So'th'n than No'th'n, but a man can't get along here unless 
he's all So'th'n. He weren't. That's the reason he weren't successful 
South, an' thought it better to try the border for his luck." Here 
again the Judge relapsed into abstraction. But his inquisitive daugh- 
ter was not going to let him ponder and smoke as he was wont to do. 

"Well, how about this young feller, Chet. What about him, paw?" 
queried Miss Katherine, more querulously. 

"Humph!" re-spoke the Judge, "yo're interested about him, are 
you?" 

"Yes, I reckon I be, yo' ain't ever told much about him an' his 
folks, and have only occasionally read his letters from Europe to us. 
I never thought much about him, until yo' wrote from Redlands, that 
he was comin' to live with us, and as you were away, and jest got 
back yesterday, Emily an' I ain't had a chance to ask yo' any questions 
about him. We've seen the photographs he sent yo' every few months, 
an' put 'em in the album, we've seen yo' send him good sized sums o' 
money, and once or twice yo' read letters to him, to us; but that's all, 
we were never concerned about him, 'cause he was so far away; now 
that he's on his way heah, we want to know what he's been. We 
never knew his paw was a low down Yank." 

Miss Emily quietly affixed her undeniable approval to the declara- 
tion by timidly saying, "That's so, uncle." 

The Judge, ruffled a little that the appellation, "low down Yankee," 
should be applied to a Huston connection, said rather sternly, "I told 
you. Miss Reddy (the soubriquet so much detested by that young lady), 
that"— 

Here the Judge was interrupted by his offending daughter, who 
said with snappy spirit, "Yo're red headed yo'self. I ain't ashamed 
o' bein' red-headed, but I don't see why I should be called Miss Reddy 
when no one nicknamed yo' Judge Reddy." 

"My dearie," said the Judge calmly, and with more kindliness of 
tone, to soothe the little rebellious temper he had stirred up, "My 
dear, if yo' were not so ready with that little fire-spit tongue of yours, 
perhaps we'd forget the hair and the name." 

"There yo' go with your tiring tautological jokes!"— pause, and 
quickly simmering down. "But go on about Chet and his'n. Paw." 

"Well, that's sensible, quite a change of mettle, too, ha! ha! ha!" 
laughed the Judge good-humoredly, "curiosity is your special weakness, 
Kathie, anyone could see that." 

After a short pipe-puflaing, during which silence reigned supreme, 



16 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

and the girls watched the Judge impatiently, "His Honor" commenced 
again in his free and easy way. 

"W-well, George Wunnal, Chefs father, though born in New Eng- 
land, was a fust class Democrat, and his vote an' heart were always 
with his ballot, he believed in State's rights to a degree, but not in 
slavery in all its forms, although he considered abolitionists dead crazy; 
with these views he was nearly a half-and-halfer with his most in- 
clined (friends) on the Southern side, his twenty years life in the 
No'th had spoilt him for a man who would have sided with the Con- 
federacy, when it was formed, as he thought the Union proper, an' 
didn't see the wrong of it in the least." 

"I hope his son Chefs got more sense," broke in Miss Katherlne, with 
emphasis. 

"Humph! We'll soon see. I guess he has. He's got enough So'th'n 
blood in him, naturally, an' it ought ter carry him through," declared 
the Judge, vigorously. 

"How was it this Wunnal came to marry a Huston, uncle?" asked 
the much silent Miss Emily, demurely. 

"Yes, how?" interpolated the ever talkative "Miss Reddy." 
"Oh, by chance, yo' may rest assured," responded the Judge. "He 
was, yo' see, a young editor o' a paper in Tennessee, where he met my 
sister Rebecca, who, because Wunnal was rather handsome, but not 
as much so as some of Beck's old beaus here in Georgia, and because 
he was something of a gallant, she had to fall in love with him. She 
was on a visit to a spinster aunt in Tennessee, and as her visit was 
prolonged, the love grew lasting, an' when it was 'bout time to return 
home to Georgia, she ran off with this young newspaper man an' 
got married. If I'd been there she'd never have done it," affirmed 
the Judge, confidently. Here the Judge was again disposed to go 
back into suspended animation, but the girls were curious, and would 
have none of it, and, after a painful pause, the irrepressible Miss 
Katherine burst out, "Go on. Paw, go on." 

The Judge, who, in the intervening moments had fallen into a 
reverie and half into the land of nod, started and ejaculated, "What?" 
"Go on with the story, Paw," reiterated his daughter. 
"Do, uncle," pleaded Miss Emily. 

"Eh? All right. Since I started in, I ought to finish up, I reckon. 
Well, my aunt who had a fiery temper, like my father— her brother- 
would have nothing to do with Becky after her error, and my father, 
after Aunt Lympy wrote home the circumstances, and remarked at 
length that Wunnal was impecunious an' a speckled No'th'ner, fool- 
ishly seconded her, declaring Becky disinherited. The principal cause 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 17 

of the ensuing estrangement though, was obviously the fact that Haw- 
ley Howard, son of old Hawley Howard, loved Becky and they were 
engaged. The Howards were rich an' influential, an' Hawley really 
loved Becky; so much so, that he'd never married up to th' time he 
was killed in a feud with th' Wills. I was a young man at the time 
Becky was disowned, an' kicked sturdily, but father's word was law," 
said the Judge, impressively looking at the oft willful Miss Katherine, 
who just blandly withstood the generally awe-inspiring look, so effect- 
ive, as a rule in the Judge's judicial capacity. "So," continued the 
Judge, "I succumbed to the inevitable and held my peace, after a 
fashion, but, occasionally I broke silence on the subject, remonstrat- 
ing with father in Becky's behalf. This only provoked storm after 
storm, each one becoming worse, and, as my endeavors were in vain, 
I shut up, although, if mother had been alive, my pleadings would 
undoubtedly have been of some avail. Becky lived in Tennessee 
nine years with her husband, and then went with him to Kansas, 
when his business was burnt out. With them they took their two 
sons, Chet or Chester, named after father, and George, named after 
Wunnal himself. The fact, that the oldest boy was christened Chester 
Huston Wunnal was clear proof that the poor mother loved her family 
dearly, above all, her father. In Kansas times were most troubled, 
but Wunnal was a gritty, honorable man and set to work to build a 
fortune for the wife and children he devotedly loved. He had proud 
blood in him, and kept his little family modestly, and held his head 
up well; he was respected, too, though everyone knew his half No'th'n 
tendencies. His Kansas paper progressed fairly good, an' from what 
I have gleaned from Chefs written information, he grew to be happy 
an' satisfied with his rather hard lot. Poor Becky was perfectly miser- 
able, an' was dyin* hungry to see her folks in Georgia. 

"About this time Tilly died o' fever, and poor Paw was terribly 
broken 'bout it; Aunt Lympy an' I tried to console him, but it was 
no use, he was inconsolable. Then I thought of a sudden it'd be a ripe 
time to have a family reunion, an' urged Aunt Lympy to help me get 
father's consent to recall Becky. She acceded to my request, when 
she saw Paw's health depended on it, an' with little talk we had Paw 
as anxious to see Becky as she mast have been to see him. Paw was 
too ill to travel, I was head an' heels busy, so Aunt Lympy made the 
trip to Kansas alone, to bring Becky and the boys home. 

"Aunt Lympy reached Kansas, saw the folks an' from the one 
letter we got from her, was havin' a jolly time. But here in th' midst 
of our expectation the crash came. Becky, her son George and Aunt 
Lympy were out ridin' with two spirited horses puUin', the horses got 



18 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

scared at somethin' an' the womeu lost eoutrol of them; the carriage 
went over an embankment, Becky an' George were instantly killed 
an' pooah Aunt Lympy mortally injured, she died a few hours after. 
By luck Chet had been left home because he was sick, an' so he was 
saved. 

"Paw, when he got the news (we broke it with caution, and mighty 
keerful, too,) sank right down in collapse, apoplexy carrying him 
off before the day was over. 

"Even after all this, I wrote on to Wunnal, to have Chet come on 
an' visit us, yo' Kathie was a little mite then. Wunnal said he would 
only be too glad to send Chet on, an' he wrote a real condoling and 
gentlemanly letter in answer to my missive. 

"A little over three months after this, poor Wunnal was shot and 
killed by a cowardly feller, whom Wunnal had disparaged in his paper 
for doin' some underhand trick. Tho' the feller assassinated Wunnal 
by takin' him unawares at night, he got off scott free. 

"Poor Chet, who was but eleven, was left an orphan. I sent word 
on to have him come on to me, but it seems Wunnal had a brother, 
who had taken care of Chet when he made a visit to him, an' as the 
youngster liked him, an' didn't know nothin' about me, it was but 
natural he should go with this uncle, Jabez, who lived in Missouri. 

"Chet lived with his uncle an' his wife, about a year or so, in the 
little Missourian town, where the uncle edited an' ran a paper. Then, 
the wife of Jabez decided to make a trip to England to see her folks 
there, she took Chet along with her. Just 'bout when she was ready 
to come back, the wah broke out an' as she was in delicate health an' 
happy with her family, Jabez Wunnal wrote her to remain where 
she was, an' to put Chet to school. She did so. The wah went on, 
an' so did her lung trouble; she traveled over Europe (for her husband 
was pretty well fixed), but could find no climate that would positively 
agree with her, consumption slowly but surely growing on her. In 
the early part of '68 she died; her husband, Jabez, had died a year 
before, and the means he had made had been nearly swallowed up by 
the costs of her efforts to regain health. Chet knew of me, obtained 
my address from a friend of mine in England, and wrote me an ac- 
count of affairs, asking me for assistance. I sent him back a sum 
to bridge over emergencies, and told him he could come on to America 
immediately and live with me. or else could remain in England with 
an allowance from me. He replied that he would prefer to finish his 
classical course that he was undergoing in England, an' then come 
on, so I acquiesced. The course took six months more to finish up. He 
has graduated now, and is comin' on to see us; to be, I hope, as much 
my son as my nephew." 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 19 

The Judge abruptly subsided, and the gh'ls quietly whispered to- 
gether for some time, finally Miss Katherine's voice broke out again. 
"I hope he is not an English fop, or a No'th'n boor, Paw," said she 
with fervor. 

"Not much," emphatically burst forth the Judge, "I know not what 
he is, but he cannot be a milksop or a boor. His Huston blood would 
preserve him from both." 

"I hope so," remarked Miss Emily moodily. 

"I knoAv so," declared the Judge, vociferously. 

"Yo're only guessin' Paw," chipped in the Judge's daughter. 

"Oh, no, I'm not! I can read his character both in his photographs 
and his letters," denied the Judge. 

'But may be he has an amanuensis who sits for his photos and 
writes his letters for him," suggested the daughter persistently and 
aunoyingly. 

"Now, yo're only guessin', Miss Calamity," cynically said the Judge. 

"Well, mabbe," was the injured reply. 

Then the girls recommenced talking girl style sotto voce, while the 
Judge continued calmly smoking. 

This peacefulness continued some little time, then the Judge drew 
from his vest pocket his massive and handsome silver watch. 

"It's four o'clock," he remarked, denoting the time, "Cousin diet 
ought to arrive in an hour. I'll go up stairs an' take a nap, then yo' 
wake me when Job has the carriage around. He'll hev it heah in 
three quarters of an hour." Rising slowly, the judge handed his meer- 
schaum to Miss Emily, who had reached for it, and then crossed to 
the door, stopping to give his wife a kiss and embrace. As he started 
on his way upstairs through the hall he turned and said: "Yo're 
pensive, to-day. Eh?" 

"Yes, dear, I'm thinking about the boy," replied his wife. 

"Don't yo' worry about him," said the Judge reassuringly. "He's 
all right. He's a Huston." 

And he went slowly upstairs, leaving his wife smiling contentedly, 
and the girls chattering, as usual. 



CHAPTER IL 



*'CHET, THE ARRIVAL." 

At five o'clock, sharp, the Judge, Mrs. Huston, the girls and the 
negro Job, with the carriage were waiting at the station in Zodgeton 
for the expected traveler. 

As usual, the slow-going Southern "express" was away behind 
time, but the station agent would only admit it was slighly slow, twen- 
ty-five minutes late. Like all late comers, the stuffy-looking locomotive 
came puffing and blowing and spouting in, as if she had accomplished 
wonders to get there any time at all. 

Soon as this snail perambulator had come to a standstill, the girls 
made a rush for the cars. The Judge less hastily followed them. (Mrs. 
Huston remaining in the carriage.) 

Among the first out was the looked-for nephew and cousin. He 
made a long jump from the steps, shooting well out on the platform. 

"There he is," cried out Miss Katherine, exuberantly, espying him, 
and recognizing him by his mooted likeness to his photos. "See him, 
Paw. Ain't he big, I declare." 

The object of these exclamations looked at the little group, dropped 
his two immense valises and made a wild rush for them, giving the 
Judge a bear-like hug, that nearly threw him off his pedal extremities, 
but was held up by the strong fellow. Nevertheless, the Judge was 
troubled with shortness of breath for some minutes afterwards. Soon 
as the young fellow relaxed his vise like grip, he turned and jumped 
for the girls, but he didn't hug them. They cordially gave him their 
hands, which he shook heartily. Even critical Miss Katherine wasn't 
disappointed in his appearance, in spite of all her pessimistic grumb- 
lings and unpleasant forebodings. 

He was a beardless youth of eighteen, about five feet ten in 
height; slim, but squarely and wirily built; his complexion was medi- 
um, neither light nor dark, his eyes an azure blue, his features plain, 
but sharp, his mouth large and clear cut, but it, and his chin, having 
a bull-dog determined look that was only softened by his kindly eyes. 
The girls were satisfied, but not captivated with him at all. The Judge 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 21 

was supremely satisfied and happy, for his nephew had the Huston 
angled nose and their expressive eyes and intellectual forehead, but 
otherwise that fond relative could discover no other family resem- 
blance. That extra tenacious mouth and chin was quite foreign, but 
it wasn't such a bad acquisition, he reasoned, even though the Huston 
chin would have sufficed, for it wasn't weak by any means. 

After a careful scanning of his nephew's features, and an attempt 
to read his mind, the Judge suddenly remembered where he was and 
perceived a crowd of "trash" collecting around his party, so he strode 
over to his nephew, grasped the muscular left arm of that young man 
and marched him along the platform towards the carriage, the girls 
falling in step behind. 

"Well, Chet, how did you like your trip?" inquired the Judge, as 
they went along. 

"Great," said Chet in an enthusiastic tone. "Of course, I was sea- 
sick, and all that on the voyage over, you know." 

"Don't Chet, use that detestable 'Yo' know, or don't yo' know.' 
I notice yo* ain't much o' a Britisher, but yo've imbibed some of th' 
mannerisms. Yo' must be American to th' core over here. No Huston 
was ever a Briton." 

"All right, nuncy, but y— um— a fellow who has spent over eight 
years on the British Isles must have some characteristics of the land, 
do-d-d—." 

"Well, now be careful, my dear fellow, I see yo're made o' Ameri- 
can material, anyway, an' yo' ain't an ape, either." 

"No, I don't think you'll find me a cad. I'm not that sort of a 
chap y-y-y " 

"Yes. I understand," said the Judge, approvingly, seeing the effort 
made to break off the eternal British phrase, "don't, etc." 

"Here yo' are at last," came the smiling greeting from Mrs. Huston, 
seated in the second seat of the family carriage. 

"Yes, here we are, and here's Chet," thrusting the young fellow 
forward to his aunt, who threw her arms around his neck and gave him 
a sounding kiss. "What do yo' think of him, Libby?" 

"Why, he's a fine fellow," replied Mrs. Huston, with fervor, as 
the "new" nephew blushed deeply or to put it more manly, became as 
red as a lobster, before this honest flattery, and we understand that 
British born and British bred men dislike flattery, verily. 

"Get on the front seat, Chet," commanded the Judge, pleasantly. 

"Oh, let me help the young ladies into the carriage first," replied 
and asked the nephew politely. 

*'4.1ja, the English have kept up your etiquette, Yo're a Huston all 



32 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

right. A year or two here will make a thorough one of you, aud there 
won't be much Wunnal left." 

Accidentally, the Judge had stepped on a corn, for back came the 
speedy and spirited reply, "Uncle, once an Englishman, always an 
Englishman, the Wunnal axiom is, 'once a Wunnal, always a Wunnal,' 
also," inoffensively, but thus firmly he spoke, and the words only im- 
pressed the Judge the more and made him think "he's a Huston for 
sure." 

At this point, Job, the "especial" Huston servant, a herculean young 
negro, came along, perspiring freely under the load of the two loaded 
and weighty valises. He placed them carefully in the carriage, whilo 
Chet and the Judge were busy assisting the young ladies into the 
rear seat. After this had been majorally and most gallantly done by 
young Wunnal, helped slightly by the Judge, Chet tipped his hat to 
the girls, who smiled, nodded and thanked decorously, in recognition 
of his services, and he helped his uncle into the middle seat beside 
Mrs. Houston, after which he jumped on the front seat, and Job, who 
was ready, started the horses off, the pack of foxhounds running with 
the carriage, barking with delight to be on the road again. 

Down the broad avenue of Zodgeton they went at a clipping speed, 
flying by the numerous little stores (with exceptions, of course,), past 
the Court House, Jail and Postoffice, on Court House Square, past 
Hodkins Hotel, the resort of the place, the two newspaper buildings 
of the town, and other local places, which the Judge pointed out and 
described to the attentive Chet. Of course, everyone looked curiously 
at the carriage and its occupants, and Job, the driver was the "proud- 
est nigger on earth." 

After passing out through the suburbs of the town, they struck 
the old turnpike, increased speed and the two blooded horses raced for 
home in spite of the heat, for the sun hadn't altogether died out yet. 

When they reached "home," all the servants were out in "full 
dress," to receive the newcomer hospitably. The gates to the drive were 
opened quickly and respectfully by Old Uncle Quinn, an aged negro, 
the oldest of the Huston servants, and a bright young negro boy. 
Both bowed their heads as the carriage went through the gateway, 
but Chet was surprised when all the servants collected around the 
household, made a sort of East Indian salaam to them, and then, 
those who did not rush eagerly forward to assist in the alighting of the 
party or the unburdening of the carriage stood deferentially aside, 
quietly, but attentively watching every movement the Hustons made. 

"What do yo' think of the place, Chet?" asked the Judge, with a 
long wave of his arm and hand. 




ARRIVAL OF "CHET" AT HIS UNCLE'S MANSION. 



^ "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"It's immense," was the terse, but honest rejoinder of the newcom- 
er, who seemed nearly stunned with happiness. 

"Yo' must see th' fahm. It's late, but after meal we'll take a stroll, 
and see what yo' think o' everything combined." 

"Oh, I'm so taken up with the place, my mind is past criticism 
already. If the farm is but a passable background to this romantic, 
picturesque scene, I'll vote it a most beautiful spot." This burst of 
enthusiasm was really out of bounds, out of proportion, and nearly 
out of sense. Though the homestead was one calculated to please the 
eye of the most prosaic person for its ruins, and its crudities only 
enhanced its picturesque value, but only to the poetic and romantic 
mind could be esteemed a "most beautiful spot," if then. Chet was 
not so poetic or romantic in nature, but the fact that after knocking 
all over by himself, virtually, as his aunt was a wayfarer, he had not 
seen for years, not even after her death, as she died in Italy, and 
at last he found his own flesh and blood full of sympathy for him, 
caused him, as it has millions before, to believe the home-trifles gems 
of arts. The ugliest negro was an Apollo, the homeliest negress a 
Venus de Milo, but, fortunately, they did not know of the enlarged 
appreciation the "young massah" had for them all; still more fortu- 
nately, the delusion was but temporary. 

Up to the house tripped the girls merrily, with short, girlish laughs, 
the Judge and Mrs. Huston leaning on the arm of attentive Chet, 
slowly following them. 

The girls had been long sitting on the piazza by the time the "rest 
of the folks" had arrived. 

"Yo're not snails, are yo'?" inquired Miss Katherine, pertly. 

"No, my red-pated Miss," came from her "paw" for her pertness. 

"I'm glad to know it. Judge Red Carrots," spat back Miss Katherine 
with fire. 

"Kathie!" came reproachfully from the mother. 

"Well, he's mean, he is!" grievously spoke "Miss Reddy," as a 
part explanation of her rudeness "in company." 

The Judge laughed, and Chet, appreciating the humor of this 
paternal and filial cross-fire, echoed it, mentally recording the point 
that he must ever be careful not to cross Miss Katherine's exuberant 
spirits, or he would wake the less enjoyable fiery ones she was mistress 
of. But his records later must have got mixed, for he broke his mental 
resolve, or caution, opened his mouth at inopportune moments, and 
this same "Miss Reddy" put his foot in it for him; worst of all, these 
practical belligerent lessons were to prove as useless as this and future 
neutral ones. 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 35 

"Come on into the house young man," called out the Judge, as he 
pufflly climbed the piazza steps, at the same time trying to laugh the 
matter off. 

"All right," rang back the tones of Chet, as he escorted his aunt 
along. "We are coming." 

The girls grabbed the Judge at the armpits, and hustled him up 
the two remaining steps, over the piazza, and headlong into the hall 
of the house. Chet and Mrs. Huston remaining in the rear. Through 
the hall they went, into the parlor, Chet seating Mrs. Huston in her 
cushioned chair (he knew it at sight, so much like his other aunt's, 
he said). The girls found chairs, and Chet seated himself on a staunch 
antique sofa, the Judge, coming unctiously forward, mopping his per- 
spiring forehead with a large bandana, suddenly snatched Chefs straw 
hat with his free hand, and comically trotted with it out into the 
hall, giving it to the colored servant there. All laughed at the Judge's 
antics, and Chefs surprise at the "lightening snatch, paw made," 
as Miss Katherine whispered audibly to Miss Emily, the "Silent," 
as Chet began to think to himself; indeed, if she had not spoken in 
acknowledgement of her introduction to him at the station, and had 
not been the recipient of so many whispers from the spirited Miss Kath- 
erine, he would have adjudged her deaf and dumb 'ere now; her laughs 
were but "titters," compared with Miss Katherine's, and her voice 
very low. 

Said the Judge, with a long drawn sigh of exertion, "We're heah 
in full, an' in plenty. Eh?" And then he threw himself on the cata- 
cornered lounge, with a whalish spout, and drew a rhinocerous breath 
when he landed on it. 

"Don't yo' break th' lounge, Judge Elephant," teasingly said "Miss 
Reddy," the bold. 

"All right Miss," good-naturedly rejoined the Judge, utterly indis- 
posed to quibble. 

Chet now began to survey the room curiously, the girls and Mrs. 
Huston watching his face to note how it impressed him. 

Facing him was a life-size painting of his grandfather, whose name- 
sake he was. The painting portrayed an elderly man of nearly six 
feet in height, shoulders slightly bent, with a smiling face, but it would 
take no connoisseur of art to decide it was forced, the careworn lines 
of the face denoting unobliterable worry. 

After scanning the face, he had never seen before, intently, seriously 
and critically (he had been told as soon as his gaze reached it, that 
it was his mother's father's picture, taken three years before his grand- 
sire's death), he lifted his eyes with a slight scarcely apparent sigh. 



26 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

and slowly re-riveted on a much smaller picture beside it, it was his 
mother's. He started slightly as he realized this (for though the face 
was younger, it was the one he loved and honored so well when he 
came to know it in later years). He had looked for some minutes on 
the noble face of his grandfather, but the maternal face held him 
spellbound with blended admiration and veneration. The first was 
noble, but full of woe in appearance, the other was beautiful and the 
look full of maiden virginity; one he had never heard, and felt noth- 
ing but the indirect harshness of an ever irate being, who had cast 
off one of his most precious possessions to satisfy his pride of ancestry, 
and to demonstrate to all fools of ancestry that he had a firm, unalter- 
able will; the other was a reproduction of the features that had ever 
been full of sympathy in his mishaps, and joy in his success, it ar- 
tistically pictured the sweet, loving lips that had imprinted a thou- 
sand of loving and inspiriting kisses on the child, now gazing upon 
her prototype. The thoughts rushed through his tired brain, one 
after the other, and at last he turned his eyes to the left of the life- 
size painting of his grandfather; there a fair-sized portrait met his 
vision, which he recognized, after thinking and straining his eyesight. 

"That is Aunt Lympy's picture, isn't it?" he asked, confidently. 

"Yes," replied Miss Katherine, her mother more quietly replying 
in the affirmative at the same time. 

Standing up, Chet crossed obliquely across the oblong room to a 
darkly painted set of four pictures in gold gilt frames. The girls sprang 
from their seats and followed after him, tittering as they did so. 
Chet immediately knew these. The first to the left was that of the 
Judge, the second Miss Katherine, the third Miss Emily, the fourth 
Mrs. Huston. They had been recently painted and all of the plantation 
took great pride in them, and, of course, Chet was loud in his approba- 
tion, although the general execution of the paintings were very medi- 
ocre. But love is blind in all its phases. The resemblance was strongly 
maintained, aud Chet was in a mood to have acceded the palm to the 
most wretched artist, therefore, the artist was a genius, and he was 
but another favorable juror to the common verdict. 

Chet was now shown the bric-a-brac, loose pictures aud other orna- 
ments of the room, all of which had a little biography, which the girls 
knew by heart, and they started to give Chet a full account of all 
their adventures, etc., but in the midst of their mingled, chattered 
recitals, the din was broken by a terrible sneeze from the sleeping 
Judge Huston, who nearly pitched forward head foremost between 
the legs of his nephew. Chet caught him dexterously, and skillfully 
held him as the twin sneeze belched forth with equal velocity, never- 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 27 

theless the Judge's feet made an involuntary impact against the wall, 
that shook the house. The Judge rose up with the able assistance of 
his nephew, amid the ejaculations, remonstrances and joking of the 
girls, who first exclaimed, "Oh, my!" then, ''Don't knock the house 
down," and as he sleepily arose rubbing his eyes, called out (or, rather, 
shocking Miss Katherine did), "Careful, Judge Fatty, careful." 

If there was anything the Judge detested, it was a super-abundance 
of fat, and this tantalizing miss struck home with a vengeance. 

"I would like you to know. Miss, that I only weigh two hundred and 
twenty-seven pounds, and I weighed last Wednesday," said the Judge, 
quite hurt. "Am I fat, Chet?" he asked that surprised individual, who 
dutifully replied with quickness and sincerity: 

"Not at all, sir. Uncle Jabez would have trebled your weight, 
I am sure." This was stretching figures, which never lie, immensely, 
but it was said with both veracious, polite and pacifying intentions. 

"Now," said the Judge, with defiant and satisfied feelings, also, 
pleased that he had obtained a full-hearted adherent in his domestic 
contentions. 

"Oh, Chet only says that," pouted Miss Katherine, displeased that 
Chet should so unwarrantably have proved an antagonistic supporter. 
This boded ill for Chet, too. 

"I know Chet only says that, but remember. Miss, Chet is a man 
of his word, he is a Huston," broadsided back the Judge, for once 
effectually silencing the batteries of the little agnostic. 

"Dinnah," quietly announced the usual household Dinah, who had 
entered silently, as all colored servants of well regulated plantations 
are taught from childhood to do. 

"Ah, ha," was the sole ejaculated reply of the Judge, who smacked 
his lips and made a hungry face, which evoked a laugh from all. 

Dinner, well it was a dinner— a true Southern planter's dinner. Not 
ostentatious or fancy, but plain, yet excellent in quality and bountiful 
in quantity. Chicken "yep," sweet potatoes, "yes, sah," "corn," "Well, 
I reckon, honey." I allow there was, and everything else any rational 
person could desire, or indeed, enjoy. 

After supper, digestion, of course. But what digestion! We all 
enjoy choice eating, and if we obey hygiene, will soon experience the 
supreme bliss of digestion. The stomach slave cannot enjoy the peace, 
and the refreshment of it, neither does the worried or hurried man 
who rushes into anxiety or all-absorbing labor, but the healthy man, 
who can afford the short or long rest after his repast is repaid amply 
for his sacrifice of time, not sacrifice or loss— he wins it back in the 
boon of health. 



1^8 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

Out on the piazza sat the quintette, breathing in with prolonged 
inspiration the cooled, fragrant and balmy air, which flushed the 
cheeks of all. 

The Judge suddenly (he generally did things suddenly) patted his 
head with his hand and then rushed into the house for "seegars." He 
got them and brought them out, a box of them. First of all, he of- 
fered them to Chet, who declined them- gracefully, much to the aston- 
ishment of his uncle. 

"Don't smoke! Well, well!" ruefully spoke the Judge, disconsolate- 
ly gazing upon his box of the "finest Cubans." "Yo' aren't puttin' 
this on for th' occasion, or aren't afraid the ladies will object are yo'?" 
asked the Judge, puzzledly. 

"Oh, no," replied the nephew. 

"Humph!" ejaculated the Judge, wiio considered this refusal rather 
milk-soppy, but his impressed belief in his nephew's manliness, de- 
terred him from thinking Chet namby-pamby. 

"Well, some one's got to smoke," afiirmed the Judge, poking the 
cigars under Miss Katherine's nose, which facial member she hastily 
withdrew from the odious weed, putting her perfumed lace handker- 
chief to her nose to overcome the smell. 

"It would be a good dinner spoilt, if it was without an after-smok- 
ing," cheerily remarked the Judge, as he laid the box of cigars near 
at hand, and lighted the one he had selected preparatory to smoking. 

"It's a good dinner spoilt to have an old nuisance like you pufiing 
smoke like a locomotive around here," came the half-expected word 
explosion from Miss Katherine. 

"I'v'e heard that before from yo', Miss Kathie," declared the Judge 
with vigor. 

"Yep," was the solitary nonchalant remark from the daughter. 
The Judge did start in "puffing," having learned the art with thorough- 
ness, the clouds that he emitted from his mouth and nasal promontory 
seemed perfectly under his control, and he sent them where he would 
to all places within a short radius from him. 

The "folks" chatted away for a long length of time, about Chet, 
of course, with their own doings and surroundings an occasional topic. 

Their main theme of conversation was Europe, all had read, and 
Chet had heard considerable about it, but from travel only Chet knew 
a little, for London, Liverpool, Southampton, Sheffield, and a few 
minor places he had visited, and but for that, his practical knowledge 
of Old Albion was cramped. Yet he knew London well, for though 
an American boy, and only a few years in the metropolis, he had be- 
come quite a Londoner, though he had by no means completely assim- 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 29 

ilated with English ideas. It is much easier for an Englishman to 
become an American than for an American an Englishman, but the 
true type of either nation is inalienable. 

Chet promised the girls a fund of European trinkets, which he had 
in his packed "luggage." The Judge was promised his share, as was 
Mrs. Huston, for he had quite a collection of foreign curios from 
England, Germany, France, Italy, nearly everywhere, mostly perquis- 
ites he had received through his tourist aunt, the unfortunate health- 
seeker. 

By the time the favorite domestic, Dinah, had brought the refresh- 
ments, it was quite dark, rather chilly, and the ladies sought wraps, 
while the Judge fastened up his magnificent smoking gown, Chet 
also donning a light, but breeze-protecting coat. 

Their chatting continued on till late, when finally Mrs. Huston 
agreeably proposed retiring for the night, but the Judge, though ac- 
ceding, suggested that he would desire a few words with Chet, hint- 
ing also that privacy was equally wished for, his wishes were com- 
plied with, the ladies bidding them good-night. 

After they had gone, the Judge seriously took a few whiffs of his 
nearly exhaused fourteenth (?) cigar, then started his "confab" with 
the expectant Chet. 

"Chet, my boy, what are you going to do here?" directly propounded 
the Judge. 

There was a pause, and Chet answered with marked deliberation: 

"Well, Uncle, my father was a journalist, so was my uncle, and so 
I expect I will try, with your consent, to become one. With this end 
in view, I have been studying, have leamt shorthand, with practical 
efforts, as well as the routine school course of It, and the other essen- 
tial adjuncts of journalism. Though I have much to learn, I feel 
prepared, and I know I am ready to try to rise in the profession." 

"Oh, ho! A man of the press, eh? Well, as yo've worked with 
that end in view, I don't believe yo'U have to start in as a devil's 
printer, but yo'll have to fight at it." 

"Yes," concurred Chet. 

"Now," continued the Judge, between whiffs of his cigar, "Yo' 
have written to me all along that yo' hankered after journalism, yo'r 
course of studies, yo' mailed me, made me cognizant of the fact, yo' 
were pursuin' the needed branches of the life, an' so I took it for 
granted yo' were in for it, but it never occurred to me before that 
I hadn't asked yo' right up an' down what yo' were after, so I decided 
to, to-night. It might 'a been the eleventh hour, if yo' had said yo' 
wanted to be somethin' else, but as I wasn't mistaken yo'r boat is all 



30 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

light. The fact is"— with an extra long interpolated whiff— "I have 
been clown to one of our town newspaper offices to see how I could 
place yo', it never occurred to me how foolish it was not to know 
squarely if you were stuck on what yo' were study in' for." Another 
pause. "Anyway, I went down to the office of the Daily Expounder, 
the editor of which I know better than that of the other, and had 
a long talk with him. He said that at a moderate salary he would 
be willing to employ a bright young fellow, prepared for his work, 
an' intimated, as I already knew, that one of his staff cared too much 
for John Barleycorn, an' that he would like to fill his place. I din't 
go over to th' Outcry office, as I thought I'd let things develop before 
tryin' it. We won't bother about newspaperism for a couple of days, 
anyhow, so put yo'r mind to rest," unconcernedly and languidly de- 
clared the Judge. 

Chet was not in favor of this, but he held his peace in deference 
to his uncle, mentally deciding to hurry him up, and, at any rate, not 
let the put off couple of days lapse into a week or more, though it 
wasn't in accordance with precedent for a new arrival at the Huston 
plantation to plunge immediately into work, but Chet saw the opening 
chance, and was eager to grasp the opportunity. 

The Judge smoked away at a merry pace, and not for some time 
did he think of his nephew sitting silently beside him. 

"My boy, I reckon you are sleepy, eh?" 

'•Rather," replied Chet with a stifled yawn. 

"Then to bed, sir," commanded the Judge, in a mock-authoritative 
tone, "the bed is yawning for you, and you seem yawning for the bed." 

"All right. Uncle," responded Chet, with forced liveliness, jumping 
up with sleepy spryness, "I'm off." 

"Hoi, on," cried the Judge. "Bard! Bard! I say!" called the 
Judge. 

"He's comin' sah," same Dinah's voice from within the house, 
and a moment later her voice rang out to prod on the wanted Bard, 
if he should be lagging in his speed. 

The sound of rapid and heavy footsteps was detectable, gradually 
growing more pronounced as they neared their destination. A minute 
more a dark, lanky form loomed up in the hallway. It was Bard. 

"Well, Massah?" inquired the negro, in a low, respectful voice. 

"Tote the gen'leman's, Marse Chefs valises up to his room, right 
away," kindly, but firmly commanded the Judge. 

"Yes, sah," came the usual respectful reply. 

"Good night, Chet," said the Judge, heartily grasping his nephew's 
hand. 




'CHET SLIPPED HIS HAND INTO HIS TROUSERS POCKET. 



31 



33 "OHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"Good-night, Uncle," came the reply, and a start for his new quar- 
ters was made, Bard leading the way, at a quick gait. 

"Dis be yo' room, sah," said the negro, as he reached the door 
of the domicile and turned its knob, opening the entrance to a wide, 
airy room, nicely decorated. 

Chet gazed around a moment, nodded his head in pleased approval, 
slipped his hand in his trousers pocket, drew out a coin and tossed it 
to the negro, whose face lighted up with joy as a natural consequent. 
He then lighted the lights. 

"Are yo' done wid me, sah?" asked Bard as quickly and silently 
pocketing the coin as Chet had drawn it forth from his. 

"Yes, thanks," replied Chet. 

The negro quickly turned, disappeared through the shadow^ed door- 
way, into the hall again. A minute later Chet heard the Judge give 
him orders for the morrow, and at once came the quiet of the night. 

The room was satisfactory in every respect, and his traps were 
in it ready at hand. So Chet was soon bestowed in bed sound asleep. 



CHAPTER III 



*'AT THE OFFICE OF THE DAILY EXPOUNDER/' 

Morning dawned as all mornings have to do, and Chet was yet 
in the arms of Morpheus. It was late in the morning before the young 
gentleman was up and in fettle for the day. His sleep had been long 
and refreshing, and he was now ready for the day's events. 

Downstairs he found all up and about, except the Judge, who, by- 
the-by, he did not expect to find, for, as he descended the stairs, he 
could hear with grating distinctness, the snore of his relative. 

Breakfast was nearly ready, when Chet reached the piazza, and 
after chatting with his cousin and Miss Emily, they marched into the 
dining room. 

The early morning, Chet spent by himself, reading the Zodgeton pa- 
pers, the Daily Expounder and the Citizen's Outcry. He had even 
the curiosity to read carefully all the advertisements, and to call for 
a tape measure and measure the sheets. 

Miss Katherine had informed him that a bitter rivalry existed be- 
tween the two papers. So bitter, that if a body subscribed to one and 
not the other also, he was open to all sorts of attacks as a most for- 
midable enemy, so the Judge had taken both papers. The editorials 
of the two papers before Chet, fully bore out this statement, and the 
columns all through were full of blatant agitation against personal 
and sectional foes. 

Chet did not relish the thought of becoming embroiled in this 
mucky wordy feud, but he decided to let destiny work out its way 
for the present, a Southern principle to the core, showing the maternal 
blood coursed through his veins omnipotently withal. 

The Judge settled Chefs forenoon solitude, by coming, fresh from 
the breakfast table, where he had been damaging food generally. 

"Come on now, an' look over th' fahm," emphatically commanded 
the Judge, grabbing Chefs arm and pulling him out of his chair by a 
spontaneous burst of effort and Chefs co-operative movement in rising. 

Oft' they went together, and overhauled the "fahm" thoroughly, 
wbUe the Judge was a walking cyclopedia, chock full of "fahm" talk, 

33 



34 



'CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 



sending forth, like a wound up phonograph, the current news of the 
crops. 

This "doing the farm," as Chet phrased It, a la Anglaise, occupied 
not only all the rest of the morning and the noon hour, but kept them 
out until some time after one o'clock, thus again Aunt Chly's dinner 
came in for another disastrous charge. 

I might mention the fact that Chet had memorized the names of 
nearly all the plantation negroes, and could recognize many of them 

W 




OFF THEY WENT TOGETHER AND OVERHAULED THE "FAHM." 

at sight. A fact which was equally pleasing to the "niggers" as to 
himself. 

It is needless to record the visits, rambles and varied events of the 
following "couple of days," lengthened by Chefs obstinacy to remain 
indolent, to only three. On the fifth day since his arrival, Chet and 
the Judge decided to pay a visit to the Expounder office to arrange 
matters. 

Well groomed and full of ardor the pair started out, the Judge 
feeling quite boyish as he remarked, "Chet, I'm a youngster pro tem, 
I allow." 

The "Expounder Building" (how the tongue of the Zodgetonian 
dwelt on all such official and mighty names) was a rickety brick build- 
ing, two stories in height, its numerous and mostly broken windows 
were plastered up with boards, card and wooden— with numerous torn 
fragments of many colored posters pasted upon them, making an amaz- 
ing aggregation of bills. 



"OHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 35 

The only window that boasted a complete set of panes was one to 
the right of the one-tenth painted arched doorway, on the surface of 
its paxies shone forth the loudly colored sign: 

OFFICE OF 
THE DAILY EXPOUNDER. 

Judge Huston led the way, brushing past the much vandal-carved 
and half open door, through the dirty little hallway to the totally unpaint- 
ed door that led into the sanctum sanctorum of that magnate, the editor. 
The door was unceremoniously flung open and in the two went. The 
editor, a middle-sized man of good proportions, guarded by a fierce 
mustache, looked up hurriedly, and Chet thought unnecessarily ap- 
prehensively at them. Chet was unacquainted with the by-laws of 
Southern newspaperism, for he was but a rollicking boy, when with 
his father and uncle. 

"Ah, the Judge," said the editor, whose contour of face changed 
to one of unctiousness and pleasure. "Happy to see yo' Judge," he 
further remarked, rising majestically, inclining his frame, and extending 
his hand to the Judge, who briefly smiled and hurriedly gave it a 
deciduous shake. 

"Sit down," said the editor, courteously and pleasantly, pointing 
to two dilapidated chairs, devoid of backing, nearly rungless, and 
whose seats were half through. The Judge and Chet took the indicated 
"seats of honor." 

"How's the folks," came the usual, matter of course, phrase opener, 
from the editor. 

"Very well, indeed; how's yourn." Without waiting for a reply, 
the Judge banged his gold headed walnut cane on the dusty paper- 
bestrewed floor and jumped from his chair, excitedly. 

"Excuse me," he exclaimed, apologetically, both to the editor and 
Chet, "This young gentleman, Bosbyell, is my nephew, from England. 
Chester Huston Wunnal. Chet, this is my old-time friend, Mr. Head- 
way Bosbyell, editor of the Zodgeton Daily Expounder," introduced 
the Judge, flaunting in all of the title heralded on the title page of the 
journal. 

"Extremely glad to meet yo'," acknowledged Mr. Bosbyell, with 
a formal shake of the hand. Chet, making the customary reply, and, 
acting on the cue, all re-seated themselves, the editor, in so doing, 
slightly jarring his oflice chair, producing a squeak similar to that 
of a fat mouse caught in a trap. 

"Ah! hem! Ah! hem!" came from the editor, echoed by the .Judge, 
and re-echoed by the editor himself, again. 




•CHET" is INTKODUCKD^BY HIS-UNCLE TO BOSBYELIj, EDITOR OF THE DAILY 
EXPOUNDER. 



36 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 37 

"Well, how's things?" inquired Judge Huston, starting in to reel 
off some of the unnecessary verbosity of the preliminary talk. 

"Fairly," replied the editor. "How's yourn?" 

"All right," came back the foreknown answer. Then the Judge 
bumped his chin with the head of his cane, thrice in succession, during 
a short meditation, the editor thrusting his hands into his capacious 
trousers pockets, and pushing his legs out before him, at the same time 
allowing an elongated whistle to escape him; he eyed Chet a second, 
then pulled his hands out of his pockets and gave the desk by his side 
a most resounding thump, that made all the bound and loose papers 
tremble alike, as if frightened by the idle, unthoughtful mood of their 
master. Some loose ones on the top of the varnish-needing desk, floated 
off on the air as a result of Bosbyell's thump, but he caught them 
all "on the fly," with exception of two which Chet sprung forward and 
captured. 

This resonant thump put the Judge on a "business basis," and 
without more ado, or parleying, he commenced on the subject and 
object of his errand. 

"Er-r-r-r," reverberated the long drawn r's of preparatory thought. 
"I reckon yo' know th' express object 0' my mission heah, yo' know we 
talked over th' matter some bit ago." 

"Ye-r-r-r," drawled out the competitive drawl, "I recollect our talk." 

"Do yo' still reckon yo' can place th' boy?" asked the Judge, quietly, 
with restrained anxiousness for a direct reply. 

"P'raps," was the most unsatisfactory answer delivered in the most 
dubious tone. 

"No, but fo' sure," tenaciously questioned the Judge, holding out for 
a positive reply. 

"Well, Judge, we're th' best 0' friends, and I believe yo' word 
unimpeachable; if yo' say yo' know that yo'r nephew understands 
th' work in its rudiments, an' has th' ability, tact an' elementary 
knowledge for the work, I'll make him a reporter on our staff at a 
reasonable salary in no time, if he be agreeable, an' yo', too." 

"Done," ejaculated the Judge, smacking his knee soundly with 
his left hand, and allowing his cane to slip with a thud from its rest- 
ing place on his leg to the floor. "Chet Wunnal is fit and most capable, 
on my word," said Judge Huston, when in truth he did not know be- 
yond his nephew's word and his commendable school reports and grad- 
uation certificate (by no means undeniable proof, for actual knowl- 
edge of one's capabilities is the only sure attestor to one's worth), 
but the Judge had, in his brief connection with his nephew, become 
to believe implicitly in him, something his bump of caution rarely al- 
lowed him to do. 



88 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"That clinches the whole affair, then," solemnly aflBrmed Bosbyell. 
Chet was dumbfounded by his uncle's confidence in him after their 
short acquaintance. 

The ensuing conversation was an animated friendly one, in which 
it was decided, both parties, the Judge and Bosbyell, for Chet entrusted 
his prospects to the hands of his wise uncle, agreeing on a suitable 
salary for Chet to enter upon his duties and responsibilities as a re- 
porter on the Expounder. 

'•"Well," said the editor, stretching his arms, "I expect I'd better 
show yo' about the buildin'. It'll interest yo' when yo' start in any- 
how." Acting on his own suggestion, by closing and locking the only 
open drawer, and slightly wheeling himself in his dismally squeaky 
chair, to be free of the desk in arising, he started for the hall, followed 
by the Judge and Chet. 

Back past the narrow ill-kept stairway they went, reaching a door 
that hung disconsolately on one hinge, and which was manifestly more 
wretched appearing than anything they had yet seen about the place, 
but only Chet noticed these trifles(?). 

Bosbyell slapped the door open with a most weak physical effort 
(if it had been stronger, Chet doubted not that the said door would 
have gone to pieces). 

This long, ill-lighted and murky room, occasioned by the shutting 
out of the sun, was most uninteresting, but Chet paid strict attention 
to every word that the ready tongue of Bosbyell articulated. The 
editor went into explanations of different things around the "compos- 
ing room," as much for the edification of Judge Huston, who, prior to 
this had never had the misfortune to visit it, as for the benefit of 
Chet. The Judge cut Bosbyell short and asked him if it was necessary 
for the reporter to assist like a jack-of-all-trades in the place, to which 
case Bosbyell replied positively in the negative, much to the satisfac- 
tion of the Judge, who Avas disgusted with the ill-kempt, tobacco- 
chewing individuals who were lazily hunting and setting type before 
him. 

Bosbyell uoav proposed a trip upstairs, so upstairs they went, on 
a flight of stairs that were slimy with dirt and tobacco juice, pro- 
tected by a wrecked balustrade, but they reached the top after exercis- 
ing great caution and emulating their nimble and sure-footed guide. 

The second floor was a degree better than that below, though 
the windows, outstripped those below in respect to stuflBug and patch- 
ing, and the printers vied with the compositors in laziness and filthi- 
ness, but the pungent odor of tobacco juice was not to be smelt, 
and the nostrils appreciated the lack of the malodorous element. This 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 39 

want of disagreeableness was not because the printers were not chew- 
ers, like the compositors, but because tobacco in any form was pro- 
hibited on account of the abundance and close proximity of paper, 
and as Bosbyell was a strict, stern man, he enforced the rule on the 
largely printed and prominently displayed sign, "Tobacco in no form 
to be used," and no one dared to ignore it in his absence, either. 

The press, a typical country newspaper mechanism, was slowly 
at work doing the equally lazy bidding of its workers. Chet was pre- 
sented with one of the half -printed papers, and comments were made 
by the trio. Chet mostly answering poignant interrogations of the 
keen editor. The cross-examination pleased Bosbyell beyond measure, 
as he gave him a chance to evince his knowledge of journalism, in its 
numerous branches, to both Judge Huston and his nephew, the pros- 
pective reporter. 

After wandering about the room, that took up the entire floor, and 
criticising the methods in vogue, and the bulky contents of the place, 
mostly paper bales, they ended their criticisms which lauded the place 
(the editor criticised and consequently lauded, also), and started for 
the stairway. On the ground floor, again, they bid the editor good-bye 
at his oflice door, and stepped out into the sidewalk again. 

"What do yo' think of the Expounder, Chet?" superciliously in- 
quired the Judge. 

"The editor seems a good friend of yours, and a good sort of a 
man, but the surroundings, or, rather, the interior of that place defy 
description. Thank goodness, my work will be out of it more than in 
it, and you can wager that I'll try to fix that office up if I'm connected 
there." 

"Yo're right, Chet, Bosbyell is a fine fellow, but his place needs 
renovating badly, but yo' must remember he is not married nor has 
any home family life, to bring him into routine of orderliness. He'll 
follow yo'r methods if yo' but favorably impress him with them, 
but I reckon yo'll find him as obstinate as a mule, if yo' don't handle 
him right. Let him see yo'r reason, and, if it's substantial, he'll either 
follow it with yo' or let yo' manage it yo'r own way alone." 

"I'll try to win him over to radical changes, if it's in my power, 

you kn ," and here Chet broke with an effort this phrase that at 

the wish of his uncle he was trying to discard. 

"The most remarkable fact appears to me that he has no uncleanli- 
ness to mar his personality, but yet is content to labor amid that actual 
and unnecessary squalor," continued Chet. 

"Yes. Well, you should understand that he is assisted, after a 
fashion, by those dirty, lazy scamps, that we saw lolling at work 



40 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

there, and he, because he has uo family to keep him above, has de- 
scended to their level in what a New England Yankee would call 
shiftlessness. And it more than dirtiness on his part has caused 
that accumulation you just saw." 

"I guess you're right, Uncle, and I'll try all the harder to convert 
him to some cleanly radicalism," vouchsafed the nephew, and both 
joined in, laughing as they continued up the street, into the little 
"heart" of Zodgeton. 



CHAPTER IV, 



"CHET'S IMPRESSION OF ZODGETON/' 

Up the broad and main thoroughfare they walked at a goodly pace. 
The lounging "white trash" of the town, bestirring themselves from 
their reclining and collapsed appearing positions, on barrels, boxes, 
etc., to Incline their heads and semi-ejaculate in a mournful greeting 
to the Judge: "Howdy, Judge," to which they sometimes received 
a stiff and haughty bend of the Judge's austere head (he never was 
thus except in the presence of these disdained inferiors; the negroes 
he treated incalculably better). 

The Judge's gorge always rose at the sight of these disgraceful 
Zodgetonians, whose only labor of love was the munching, "chawin'," 
and liquidating of tobacco. 

As they hurried along, they passed the "Outcry Building," as the 
blurred and nearly illegible green letters on the side of the soiled white 
wooden building informed the passer-by. This paper was the hated 
competitor of the Expounder, for the control of the news-reading pop- 
ulation of Zodgeton. The building, like the Expounder's, was two- 
storied, but somewhat larger. Chet also noted in his quick glance at 
it, that the windows were more whole, and less boarded up, but Ohet 
decided that it distanced but little the Expounder in respectability 
from its outward appearance. 

"Why didn't you try this place and see how you could settle me 
here. Uncle?" asked Chet. 

"P'raps It would have been judicious to have sounded this place, 
but I don't care much for the editor o' the concern. We aren't ene- 
mies," remarked the Judge, as they were leaving the edifice in the 
distance, "but he treated a friend o' mine roughly. I like Bosbyell, 
an' know if I had anything to do with Brown, the other editor, our 
friendliness would be knocked asunder, so I didn't bother with him," 
declared the Judge. 

"But won't you excite the anger of this Brown, putting me on the 
opposition paper?" questioned Chet. 

"Probably, but he can't hurt my interests. I can look out for my- 

41 



42 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

self. I never create au enemy if there is a possibility of avoiding 
it, but when I have an honest end to gain, I'm not minus the grit to 
put my foot forward, my boy," determinedly spoke the Judge. "My 
political positions must come to me before I will accept them, and 
it is therein the strength of the two newspapers is centered. I never 
have and never will rack my brains with politics," concluded the 
Judge, "and so am above their power." 

By this stage of their walk they had reached the Court House 
Square, and Chet, had only the hurried glance at the town as he was 
driven by in the carriage on the day of his arrival. 

Before them was the typical country town square, in the center 
of which stood the red brick Court House, and we are proudly told 
by the native Zodgetonians, "it cost e-i-g-h-t thousand, f-i-v-e hun- 
dred." Just think of it! If the town lounger does not see any visible 
surprise depicted in your face he will probably "drap" with the same 
astonishment he expected to note in you. 

The jail of the place, variously designated in the local vernacular, 
is a plain, wooden structure, that does not evoke the admiration of the 
loungers. Though the "white trash" are not partial to this small 
building, situated at the east end of the square, yet the law-abiding 
citizens support it strenuously as elsewhere, their admiration for the 
plucky sawed-off sheriff, Boland Samuels, is unbounded. He is a mus- 
cular thickset man of small stature and medium age, his assistant, 
"Bob" Runkel, is a lanky six-foot-sixer, also exceptionally muscular 
and plucky. 

They constitute the usual town police force and maintain the peace 
with an iron hand, though they often have a tussle for it. The "white 
trash" give them the least trouble, for, as the sheriff puts it, "they're 
all holler and talk, all that kind air cowards for sure." It's the blooded 
people in their feuds and quarrels that keep the "police" of Zodgeton 
on the go. For the "white trash" the jail is but a bugaboo, and the 
sheriff and his deputy are accordingly accorded the greatest respect 
by their "chews," "drinks," etc., thrown in when they can afford, 
so as to "keep on th' fair side o' th' sheriffs." But these officials take 
this homage and attention as if it were owed them and the donors 
of the favors are not one iota better off, so far as protection from arrest 
is concerned, but they can brag that they've "fixed the sheriff" to their 
credulous friends, who speedily become skeptics on the matter of 
"fixin'," if they ever have occasion to see the future futile efforts of the 
blower to escape justice by dodging the law, but his bragging continues 
unabated, even when he has had a long acquaintance with the interior 
of the jail. These trials only serve to increase his desire to brag of 
an influence he does not possess. 



'GHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 



43 



Judge Hustou had, iu substance, giveu all this iuformation to Ohet 
as they neared the jail, and as they reached the door of that building 
they found the sheriff seated in the doorway, they stopped, and the 
Judge introduced his nephew, who nearly had his bones crunched by 
the grip the sheriff gave his proffered hand. 

After a brief local conversation and another introduction to the 




i./5^^ 









^^ J^^'i-i' 




^'■tt^l^m,; 




CHET'S UNCLE INTRODUCES HIM TO THE SHERIFF 



Sheriff's deputy, "Bob" Rundel, who was in the rear of the jail, they 
started out on their jaunt again. 

Passing the Court House, the Judge met an old friend, Major 
Zachary. While talking with him, out of the Court House marched 
with a soldierly bearing, a gentleman, who joined the group, and was 
introduced to Chet, who had spied him as he made his exit from the 



44 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 



building, as "Captain Ogdane, my boyliood chum." Chet cordially 
shook hands with him, and then remained a quiet spectator and hearer 
in the animated conversation that followed. When the conversation 
had been under way some time an addition was made to the group 
in the person of a Squire Peabody, who reanimated the chat. At last 
"a social glass" was proposed, and all started for a resort designated 
briefly "Quinn's." 

At "Quinn's," which proved to be an ordinary country hotel with 
a bar, Colonel Sallwell was met, and Chet introduced. 




THE PRIZE SPITTER. 

Chet contented himself with what he considered an unnecessary 
glass of "sodah," but the rest of the party took something wahmer." 
The conviviality of the gentlemen was pronounced, and Chet, consider- 
ing his presence unnecessary, stepped to the door and took a look up 
and down the street. 

Outside were three or four dry goods boxes, and, as it is necessary 
for flies in summer to get on butter, so were the tops of the large 
wooden boxes hidden by the forms of the indigenous lounging "white 
trash." 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 45 

They were drawling out their miserable, mumbled and nearly un- 
recognizable English, one fellow sleepily listening to the principal 
spoliesman, who gained ascendency over the other drawls, was spit- 
ting viciously and alternately at a hole in an opposite box and the 
top of a friend's boot. He was evidently an "expert," because he 
hit his mark without a miss. This tobacco-expectorating William 
Tell occupied the sleepy attention of the batch, equally with the orator 
of the crowd. He seemed to have free and easy access to all the weeds 
in the possession of his comrades, who seemed not at all loth to supply 
him with "chaws from thir precious plug," so long as he amused 
them with his accuracy in spurting his little reservoir of tobacco 
juice on the passing and inanimate objects in reach, their own clothes 
being favorite and much enjoyed targets for his eagle-eyed precision 
in expectorating. 

This sight nearly gave Chet indigestion, and he turned on his heel 
and sauntered back into the hotel, just as the "white trash speaker" 
began to "cuss" some Individual he roundly abused as "Lem." For- 
tunately, the phonograph has never been called upon to reproduce 
such a vocabulary of blasphemy, and for the good of humanity, I 
hope it never will. 

Reaching the Judge and his friends, he noted that from a rear door 
a number of "trash" had come in and had sprawlingly seated them- 
selves on the bar-room table and chairs, hungrily and wistfully look- 
ing at the "prime old whiskey" disappearing down the throats of the 
Judge and his friends, the nabobs of the town. 

The talk of the party had tumbled on that pyrotechnic subject, 
politics, not national, but most aggravating local politics. Chet had 
returned to catch the tall end of the wordy tornado of these fast 
friends (?) who now threatened to split their relationship because of 
their partisan views, but the Judge shone out resplendently as the only 
individual of the party who seemed to be out of the fracas of tongues. 
Chefs ear caught the words of Squire Peabody, who, in a voice of 
thunder, declared above all the others: "Graham won't be Mayor of 
this town if my influence can prevent it." 

"Your influence can't prevent it, Squire," confidently said Major 
Zachary, in a vociferous warmed-up voice. 

"No, Graham is the man," chipped in a seconding voice. Captain 
Ogdane's. The landlord, Mr. Quinne, had mingled with his guests 
during Chefs absence at the doorway. He shook his head slightly at 
this declaration, showing his sympathy was with the Squire. 

"Never," soundly denied the Squire, ' Yo'r faction will never carry 
him over. Will they Judge?" inquired he of the erstwhile silent Judge. 



46 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"I don't surmise iu the matter at all," quietly and good-naturedly 
was the answer, "I'll let yo' do the nomination an' then yo' know my 
vote's fo' th' successful man, that goes up on our unanimous Demo- 
cratic ticket for election," replied the Judge in a decisive tone, address- 
iug them all jocularly', but resolutely in accordance with his policy 
of washing his hands of politics. 

There was a dissatisfied "humph!" from the Squire, who said 
something under his breath about it being a nice thing for a lawyer 
to be out of every man's politics, but the Judge missed the low spoken 
word, and made no reply in consequence. The look of the "Graham- 
ites" was that of unconcern, in contrast to the Squire's crestfallen 
expression (although he had exjiected the blunt uncompromising an- 
swer of the Judge). 

The Major and Captain Ogdane had expected the usual neutral 
answer of the Judge, whose potent influence, they precursed, would 
1)0 cast neither way, but left to him, w^hom best he could, capture all 
or part of it. They knew from experience (as did the Squire at heart) 
that questions, direct or indirect, would only bring forth non-committal 
replies, that put him in a stronger non-partisan light than he was be- 
fore, and as their convictions were not disturbed by the broaching 
of the Squire's question, their expression remained as even as ever. 

"How is yo'r compass guidin' yo' on the impending primaries? 
From what yo've said, an' what I've heard, yo' ought to be reckoned 
with the Varnaby faction, along with the Squire, eh?" asked Major 
Zachary, sharply and sourly, of Colonel Sallwell, at the same time 
giving vent to his preconceived convictions. 

"My compass, sir, is decidedly towards Varnaby; he will surely win 
the mayoralty in spite of you gentlemen," rejoined Colonel Sallwell. 

"Oh, no!" came from Major Zachary, Mr. Quinne (one of those 
Southern rarities, needing a titular prefix) and Captain Ogdane, who, 
all emphatic, all shook their heads, and continued doing so so long, 
that one might think they were endeavoring to imitate dervishes. The 
Colonel and the Squire shrugged their shoulders, contemptuously, while 
Judge Huston grinned broadly. 

Said the Colonel, "I would have proposed old Captain Stone, but he 
has the gout, and is further incapacitated and sorely troubled with 
pleurisy, and refuses positively to put himself forward, besides he's 
a friend of Varnaby, a staunch friend. I was disappointed, notwith- 
standing, in his peremptory manner of refusal, and readily saw it was 
worse than useless to urge him," pausing to knock the ashes from his 
cigar, during which stoppage in his speech the Major, perhaps, took 
undue advantage of the opportunity and broke in: 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"It's a wonder yo' and Captain do Gane did't run out poor old 
Collier," derisively, but not ungentlemanly, spoke Captain Ogdane. 

"He has more admirable traits an' qualities in him than Varnaby 
has, or ever will," bitterly responded the Colonel. 

"Yo' are on the outs with Colonel Varnaby," remarked Major Zach- 
ary, "and because of those military differences that yo' had with him 
during the wah, yo've thrown yo'r power in his way; but they'll 
only impede him, Colonel," spiritedly thrusted the Major. 

"By no means. They'll do more than impede. He cannot overcome 
the obstacles in his rocky road to success. Captain du Gane is a most 
bitter antagonist of Varnaby's," declared the Colonel, in responding. 

"Yes," irritably said Captain Ogdane, "but I consider him a non- 
entity. He carries a purse an' a violent tongue, that's all." 

"Sir, you will soon learn a deeper respect for the Captain's ability, 
and assess his power much higher; you forget he is a close connection 
of the Hales, an' their influence carries weight, and, that as well, he 
has influence," said the Colonel, nettled at the aspersion cast on his 
friend. 

They all fell to violently puffing their cigars, except the Judge, 
who leisurely continued his smoke. 

At last Major Zachary started up. 

"Well, Cunnel, yo' aren't utterly mistal?:en in saying that Cap'n 
du Gane has power. But demn his power, I say. He use to live in 
Florida, an' since th' wah has settled heah, with his relatives. Be- 
cause of some unknown prejudice, imagined slight or somethin' or 
other, he's gone in madly with yo' supporters o' Varnaby, but he'll 
get no persimmons for yo'." 

"Major Zachary, yo'r sympathies carry you away, I tell yo'." At 
this point of affairs, Colonel stopped, and with the rest looked at the 
door, as there lumbered in an elephantine man of truly Falstaflian pro- 
portions, who looked as if he had ruined saloons by solitary imbibing 
of their liquors. In one of his fat paws was the hereditary staff of 
Shakespeare's fat knight (so it seemed), and with his other hand he 
was softly patting the huge black and shiny alpaca jacket encom- 
passing his mountainous stomach, that the benighted savages, who 
believe the seat of intellect to be in the belly, would have considered 
made him the brainiest individual in the world. 

"Ah, Squire Yorde; how are we?" asked Judge Huston, happily, 
both in welcome to the newcomer, and in an effort to break up the un- 
healthy conversation on the tapis. 

"Well, well, I ain't seen yo' in a coon's age," came the gutteral 
answer from this prodigious fat man, who extended his left hand to be 
shaken, as it was. 




"AH, SQUIRE YORDE, HOW ARE WE ?' 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 49 

"Here is another upholder of Graham, Colonel," declared the Ma- 
jor, triumphantly, as the corpulent personage was being introduced to 
Chet, by the Judge. The Colonel looked at this "upholder" in profound 
contempt. 

Squire Yorde immediately proposed more liquor, which was ordered, 
and all, excepting abstemious Chet, partook of with great gusto. Then 
the Judge, looking at the clock, mentioned the time to Chet, debated 
a second with himself about leaving the rest, and then decided to 
bid them au revoir, temperately declining more liquor. Chet and the 
Judge then started for home. 

So it was that Chet obtained his first conception of Zodgeton propf^r 
and Zodgetonians. 



CHAPTER V. 



•*THE NEV REPORTER ON THE EXPOUNDER/' 

Monday was the appointed day for Chefs commencement in his 
official capacity on the staff of the Daily Expounder. The day of the 
visit being Saturday, there was but Sunday to intervene, and Chet 
went to church with the Judge and his family, spending the remainder 
of the day in absolute rest and quiet. 

Monday morning Chet was up bright and early, outdoing his uncle, 
who was snoring away for dear life (as he had been each morning, for 
that matter.) 

After one of Aunt Chly's most excellent breakfasts, Chet and the 
Judge started out to walk into town, to the Expounder Building, foot- 
ing it, as the Judge said, to reduce superfluous flesh, although this 
hardly held good in Chefs case. Still the lively little pace they pedes- 
trianized at freshened and stimulated him. 

The Judge just dropped in at the Expounder office, exchanging 
greetings with Bosbyell, who had just arrived ahead of them, and 
then went on down town, to attend to some legal and private business. 

Bosbyell had saluted Chet with a brief "Howdy," and had then con- 
tinued a whispered disjointed conversation with two young men busy 
on some files of papers. 

During the elapse of time, Chet sat uneasily on his seat, uncertain 
if there would not be a good sized hole in the seat of his trousers by 
the time the editor was ready to talk out, or if the seat of his invalid 
chair might not go through, overburdened with its cares, or if the 
solemn clock should run down with latigue, or some other catastrophe 
happen, but his fears were groundless. 

After a time, the uneasy situation of Chet was relieved by Bosbyell 
quietly suggesting that Chet hang up his hat and coat, as he and his 
associates had done. 

After having flung off his coat and "nailed" his hat with it, Chet 
looked askant at the editor, who was preoccupied on a paper one of 
the young men had handed him, and was consulting him about, the 
other remaining equally occupied, on a little bundle of sheets of his 

50 



■'CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 



51 



own, which seemed to cause him numerous internal dissensions and 
debates. 

Again the silence was dispelled by the editor completing his labored 
correction of errors on the sheet before him, and looking up, hastily 
introducing the young man at his side as "Mark Bosbyell, my brother, 
associate editor of the Expounder." The two young fellows, Chet and 
Mark, nodded pleasantly at each other, and then the other young man, 




THEN CONTINUED A WHISPERED, DISJOINTED CONVERSATION. 



"Mr. Digby Olden," a rather reserved, but more pleasant-featured 
young fellow than Mark, who was not ugly, was introduced. He 
looked to Chet a little older, possibly twenty-four. 



52 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

Mr. Olden, in common parlance, "Dig," was a plain reporter, like 
Chet. Having finished liis office worli to his satisfaction, he grabbed 
his coat, tossed his "straw" on his head, and bounced out with a 
scarcely articulated "good-day," for common politeness sake. Mr. 
Mark Bosbyell soon followed suit in a like manner. Then the editor 
continued scribbling away with a round blue pencil he held eccentric- 
ally up, down, crossways, sideways and noways, it seemed to Chet. 
At last, the pencil was banged on the desk, and the editor freed his lungs 
of pent up carbon dioxide, and, after having left off his surplus steam, 
he pushed his chair back against the wall, with a whack. 

"Well, Chet," said he tentatively, "I suppose you want something 
to do. Just look over these files the boys have made; those are the 
'about town' results of their wits yesterday, and I guess yo'll find er- 
rors in their work. I always do. If you find they are shatterin' gram- 
mar or anything like that just fix it; when yo're through I'll have 
something more for you." 

So Chet pitched into work, and for the next few days he was in 
for it in earnest, and showed Bosbyell and his assistants his mettle. 
His labor was entirely in the office, most foreignly to a reporter's 
duties, revising the notes and "tid-bits" brought in by Mark and "Dig," 
and even descending from his nominal position of reporter into that 
of book-keeper. 

When the proofreader was "laid up" for a day, he also took his 
place into the bargain, with his other duties. 

The office, in pursuance of his statement to the Judge, Chet had set 
about to renovate. First of all, at spare moments, he cleaned it up 
until it was thoroughly free from dust, after having persuaded Bos- 
byell to lay away his desk papers, so that they would not be swept 
away, and the two assistants of his staff, tractable enough, if he could 
only show them the point gained in doing a thing, but this took all 
his ingenuity and patience to do, and then he only partially succeeded. 
The room-cleaning, oiling of the editor's century unoiled office chair, 
that screeched so pathetically at times, the varnishing of the editor's 
desk, was work, performed almost entirely by Chet with the simple 
accedance of Bosbyell and his associate editor and brother, and the 
slight, but good-natured assistance of the other reporter, "Dig." The 
cleaning of the hall, he had done by the combined assistance of the 
compositor, "Dig" and himself, but his efforts to obtain new panes 
for the broken office windows (remember, one was whole) fell flat, 
as did his efforts for a repainting of the room and hall, and the mend- 
ing of the dilapidated balustrade. 

One event had occurred which proved most baleful to Chet, who 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 53 

had never been in such a position before. The day Chet joined 
the Expounder, Bosbyell had written a laudatory article, commending 
him to all perusers of the paper, and the next day it was given promi- 
nent space, much to Chefs personal gratification, but the next day 
following the publishing of the issue containing the article, Chefs 
pride was as rudely knocked to its knees, by a glaring editorial in the 
Outcry, the opposition paper, which was handed to him for his in- 
spection by "Dig," the young reporter, with whom he had become a 
mutual chum. Here is the article: 

"On Monday of this week, that foul contem.porary, The Daily Ex- 
pounder, of this city, received an addition to its ranks, in the person 
of a young imported blockhead, by name Wunnal, which fact is boasted 
of in large type by that empty-headed verbialist who edits the sheet. 
From responsible sources, we learn that this American-English ape, 
this Wunnal, is a son of a Northern New England born and far West 
bred Yankee, who married by elopement a Southern girl, and then 
went to Kansas and turned dead North, after seeing that his attempts 
to pass as a Southerner were nil. The uncle of this pernicious fello^r 
Wunnal, who has joined the asinine staff of the Expounder, was a 
cowardly, Northern scribbler, who ran a defiling paper in a black 
abolitionist settlement on the border of Missouri, abusing the fair 
South, and her people and principles in a raanner that no self-respect- 
ing Southern journalist could hope to have imitated even if he so vilely 
willed. This flattered popinjay, who has invaded the sacred precincts 
of this beautiful city, is now prepared to stuff down the throats of our 
unsuspecting citizens the most shameless, improvised calumnies con- 
cocted in conjunction with his despicable associate writers of that vi- 
tiated sheet, styled the Expounder. Shun him! Shun him and the leper 
sheet he writes for!" 

"Well, that fellow has a gentle outlet to his opinions, hasn't he," 
said Chet, to "Dig" and Bosbyell, as he finished reading. 

"Oh, that's nothing," replied the editor, "you wait awhile, and see 
how he improves on it." 

"I've a mind to go around to his office and punch his head for 
him," said Chet, with flashing eyes. 

"Don't do that, Chet," said "Dig," quickly. "He has his shootin' 
irons for visitors, and yo' wouldn't find the office healthy, even if yo' 
carried a gun, an' I reckon yo' don't, do yo'?" 

"No," replied Chet, shortly, "but I'll give him a beating for this." 

"No, yo' won't," declared the editor, mollifyingly. "Yo'll be doing 
sensibly if yo' quell yo'r uncle's anger, if he has any, as well as yo'r 
own. This fellow an' his lot are only too ready for a row, an' they'll 



54 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

get it," meaningly, "before th' municipal nominating convention ad- 
journs, without yo' steppin' in." 

Later Chet made additional threats to chastise the editor of the 
Outcry, but subsequently followed Bosbyell's and "Dig's" advice, in 
fully quieting his irate uncle's gorge as well as his own, but now 
forth Chet began to think much more of the Expounder, and felt thor- 
oughly revengeful against the Outcry, and pricked on by the event, 
he soon became learned in the little school of sarcasm and agnosticism 
advocated by the press. 

The Expounder had sided with Colonel Jefferson Hadry Graham, 
in the struggle for the mayoralty nomination, and the Outcry had 
taken up the hue and cry against Graham, and was at the back of 
Colonel Marius Cassius Varnaby. The nomination struggle was equiv- 
alent to that for election, for the man nominated on the Democratic 
ticket was elected we could say with confidence. 

The animosity of the two papers was now vastly increased by 
their stands on the issue and the exchange of penned bullets were fre- 
quent. The papers had changed from being full of local news and 
advertisements to being full of politics, partisanship and advertise- 
ments. 

The nominating convention would convene in a week, hence the ex- 
citement had risen from intermittent to persistent fever heat, even the 
"white trash" of the town were inoculated with the vim around them, 
and followed and rallied around their respective leaders, who were 
proficient in the art of bully-ragging and bombasticism. 

Bad blood, strained relationships, had sprung up generally, and 
plainly trouble was ahead, while the two papers of the town were 
foremost in the inciting of the rising wrath. 

Friday of the week, each faction was to hold their barbecue with 
their partisans; winding up their enthusiasm for the vital w^eek. Bos- 
byell decided that Chet, in company with Dig, should be initiated into 
the practical duties of his oflice, by reporting in conjunction with his 
fellow-reporter, the on-coming " 'cue," at which numerous factional 
Demosthenes would lift up their voices in eulogy of their candidates 
and in depreciation of their opponents. 

Not only the Mayor, but the town councilmen, as well, were to 
be nominated, together with a sheriff (Samuels being an unanimous 
choice, this issue was ended), and minor officials of the municipal 
government. 

Speechmaking, drinking and the other accompaniments of "ante-elec- 
tion" were daily and nightly occurring, but none of these by-events 
rose to the dignity of a " 'siderable gatheriu'," and beyond casual 



"CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 55 

remarks, or jottings of their occurrence, the ambitious principals, who 
preached themselves hoarse on politics, were unable to see their Web- 
sterian spoutings in black and vanity-producing print. 

But, mayhaps, the predominating cause of the non-appearance of 
the innumerable factional speeches on the pages of either newspaper 
was owing to the space taken up by the "addresses to the people-at- 
large," of the "manifestoes," warning and desecrating "editorials," 
"the opinions of this paper on political issue," and the countless stories 
of a scurrilous nature, printed to create a current adversion against 
the other side. 

Chet was doing a Trojan's job now, as were his fellows, who were 
characteristically sluggards, but whose Southern blood had commenced 
to tingle under the opposition "fire," and danger was sniffable in their 
spasmodic efforts, in which it was noticeable that indolence was ab- 
sent, a most ominous sign. 

To give a lucid schedule of affairs, I will excerpt from the two 
duelistic journals, the Citizen's Outcry and the Daily Expounder. 

The following is an article written in sarcastic feeling, desiring 
an amendment of Bosbyell's name, written, of course, by the Editor 
Browne, of the Outcry: 

"We have an ambiguous paper, which especially afflicts this proud 
rity, as well as the press of the entire State. 

"This aforesaid sheet is edited by a loud-voiced falsifier, whom 
we know, to our sorrow, as Bosbyell, a downright, dyed-in-the-wool, 
staiiiped-on-the-face political roustabout, and a knave of all species. 
A man to avoid personally, and in propriety, to shun in all quarters. 

"This simulator of respectability and honesty, entitled Bosbyell, 
spells his miserable cognomen most incorrectly, for to be indited un- 
eriingly there should be an inserted H between the fifth and sixth 
letters of his surname as it stands at present, otherwise the name will 
remain supremely inappropriate, for in speaking of him orally we in- 
tonate it both necessarily and unconsciously with the H. 

"A man with such a sardonic smile, satanic laugh, and devilish 
heart, deserves all the inherent significance of the appellation of hades, 
the only region he is suited or was intended for. His glaring crimes 
and defects, which he attempts to cover with blackest iniquity, rouse 
the wrath of his justly indignant peers, and he Avill yet be groveling 
at the feet of those he has backbitten, blackmailed and degradingly 
libeled. Therefore, 1 reiterate, brand this snake in the grass, if not in 
name, in social standing, my suggestion is only a portion of giving the 
devil his due." 

The following is a retort of Bosbyell on the animosity of the Out- 
cry: 



66 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"The mangy little job press of this city, the Outcry, which has gath- 
ered a uuiiiber of supporters around it, by its honeyed language (which 
it only uses to gain favor), now puts forth another of its petty affronts 
against us by trumping up a lot of disagreeable rot against a new 
member of our staff, at the same time disparaging his noble, unblem- 
ished family name. 

'•The insignificant puppy of this whining sheet, its editor, I refer 
to, should hide his head in abject shame, when he comes to the sub; 
ject of names, let alone the fact that he has been the author and 
flaunter of consummate bosh by which he has tried to become con- 
spicuous, he has tacked to him a cognomen that causes the thinking 
man to laugh. It is a name that truly exhibits the commonness, and 
gross trashiuess of his ancestors, and demonstrates in letters, the 
peisonificaticn of vain unbridled idiocy, one finds the personage whom 
it designates when he comes to deal with him. What nerve has this 
flust<.n'ing jackanape to come forward and criticise the name Bosbyell, 
an hereditary honor of Itself, when he himself, is forced to sign him- 
self (which he does with supreme pomposity) Marmaduke Livingstone 
Smith-Browne. The elongatedness, worthlessness, and affectedness 
expressed in these cognomens are a practical, philosophical deduction 
of the being's individuality." 



CHAPTER VL 



**CHET IN HIS OFHCIAL CAPACITY AT THE BARBECUE/* 

The barbecue, or 'cue, as it is characteristically tersed by its avowed 
practitioners, is indigenous to the New World. When our old benefac- 
tor Senor (beg pardon, Mr.) Christofo Colombo, first "struck" his con- 
tinent, he found the wild Caribs (from the native name of whom 
cannibal was derived) heartily ready to 'cue him and his small ex- 
pedition, as the full-blooded Caribs of the forests of Guiana, and along 
the Orinoco River, South America, are yet anxious to do with adventur- 
ous beings of the present. 

This Indo-American race of man-eaters (scarcely as sharky as 
some of their Yankee brethren of to-day) attained to the acme of 
cannibalism, and practiced their skill in the said art, on quite a num- 
ber of the islands of the West Indies, from which they have mysteri- 
ously disappeared, but their progeny still inhabit the coast of the 
Caribbean, extending from the Isthmus of Darien nearly on to the 
River Amazon's mouth. All, except the South American type of Caribs, 
lack the traditional humanity-chewing love of their forefathers. 

General (Christian name abbreviated) Oglethorpe and his steadfast 
proteges, the bankrupt debtors, settled fair and sunny Georgia, and 
they no doubt observed the native 'cuing trait, and turned 'cuists them- 
selves. Although converted by force of example, they neglected most 
luckily to devour each other with the Indian avidity, but preyed upon 
Nature's lower animals, serving them as the barbarians did their help- 
less prisoners. 

Barbecue is authoritively declared to be derived from the Haytien 
barbacoa, signifying a framework of sticks. The barbecue, or 'cue, is 
now only peculiar to some of the Western and Southern of the United 
States, each having especial functions, features and adjuncts of their 
own. But all are, as a rule, open air entertainments and social gather- 
ings whereat animals are broiled or roasted intact. 

The two political 'cues of the Zodgetonians were to be in the pure, 
outdoor air, and all connoisseurs and gourmands of 'cues were cor- 
dially invited to be on hand to act in one accord. 

The Varnabyites had a beautiful, luxuriant grove of their own, 

57 



58 



'CHET." A SOUTHERN NEWSPArER REPORTER. 



as had the energetic CJrahamites, and each bad their eyes on the other 
in their preparations for their feasts. Each strove to secure the best 
liDown and valued 'cuists purveyors, and each met with equalized 
flattering success. 

Outlays for all minor, as well as potent features were made with 




STARTING FOR THE "CUE". 



the usual demagogue's liberally before election (we know he has uorie 
after). 

Everyone was "pol'tics crazy," and the "trash" that could read to 
his fellows the political news, was considered a jewel, his stammering 
forgiven and poor pronunciation overlooked. 

The night of the rival 'cues stomach desire and faction excitement 
had risen the blood of the most sluggish partisans to fever heat, and 
their pulses would have alarmed all but a Southern physician. 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 59 

Cbet felt the inward and outward strut of proud and honored boy- 
hood, but to prevent pride going before a fall, Judge Huston warned 
his gladsome nephew to beware of expressed or demonstrative par- 
tisanship, and Miss Katherine tossed a sarcastic thrust into the grue- 
some lot of advice, which, however, Chet bore in mind. 

It was a fragrant moon and starlight night, the orange blossom, 
Cherokee rose and other emblematic Southern flowers w^ere out in all 
their versed glory; the scene so quaint and dear to all thorough-hearted 
Georgians, and to all entrancing, but as I am not a poet, I cannot 
transpose my description to verse, more than to say that the scene 
was a poem in itself. 

Chet, with "Dig," and his fellow, and, as I remarked, chum, started 
and arrived at the grove together, in company with hordes of exuber- 
ant, boastful Yarnabyites, who made their blood surge with their 
partisan talk, especially "Dig's," but, with good discipline of charac- 
ter, they abstained from firing back at the outnumbering crowd blas- 
plieming their friends; they were there to observe, note and report, and 
criticise their pleasure, both in print and verbally when out of the en- 
emy's camp. 

"Remember it is as much as yo'r life is wo'th to be an outspoken 
Giahamite to-night. Yo' must be mum for sure, Chet," whispered "Dig," 
to Chet, as he separated from him to "round up" occurrences and in- 
cidents, with spying, a no unimportant side-object, Chet felt, and was 
well cautioned, started with the same object as his chum, quietly 
maintaining his reserve. 

Georgia is the State for 'cues (though a Kentuckian will tell you 
differently), and we hold that the Kentucky "cocktail" colonel is the 
dominant imbiber of throat blazing rum in general (though there are 
others to claim the honor (?) ), but Georgia ranks among the num- 
ber ones all around. 

What Southern "trash" can't guzzle a barrel of whisky and its 
sister intoxicants, mixed and unmixed, and yet remain supremely 
unsatisfied? And if "trash" stomachs can receive and store all this, 
what cannot the cultivated, blue-blood imbibers dispose of in their 
copper-lined receptacles in the same ratio? 

The hungry and thirsty bellied " 'cuist" gluttons were out in 
divided, but omnipotent force, and he who was delicate about pitching 
in (by-the-by, where was he?) was left, but Chet felt assured that every- 
one landed on the food, and that the food landed in them, before the 
stars had had half a chance to twinkle. 

Negroes, stationed at the pits, were busily occupied and sweating, 
in basting the carcasses, which work had been proceeding slowly, con- 



60 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

stantly and carefully for many hours, as it must be up to standard 
" 'cue" quality. Lambs, shoats. and kindred animals, not oxen, or large 
quadrupeds, were roasting entire and cooking tediously, to follow the 
viands that the carnivorous crowd would soon demolish in their en- 
tirety, and, be yelling and growling for more, but the "more" was 
the "holder," as well as the "bait," for, in spite of worked up enthusi- 
asm, sleepy, bored, constituents will desert tiresome speakers unless 
there is a "something," a big "something" like this, to keep them to- 
gether; thus discretion won the day, for the "something," the remain- 
der of the "layout," came in at the end of the all-important speech- 
making. The fox never treats, unless he gets his dues. 

Chet was not enraptured or appetized by the process of prepara- 
tion for the 'cue's grand finale, the uninitiated are generally placed 
hors (lu combat by prolonged gazing, just as green seafarers catch 
sea-sickness, and decided it was the best for his gustativeness to level 
his sight on some other scene than the little domestic animals over 
in the long trenches, resting separately' on rods or spits, over the live 
coals, while the blacks, under the superintendence of knowing white 
individuals, were busily moistening the carcasses with an aperient 
basting (vinegar and so forth) as the carcasses kept on their slow, 
hades-like roast. 

The finis of the 'cue roast is encountered when the roasting car- 
casses fall apart, at which stage all "fall in," devouring with 'cuist 
rapacity the juicy batches of the 'cued animals, which are now edible 
and through muster, having been deposited in yellow capacious bowls 
in liberal heaps. 

The stews, which form the other half of the barbecue, must be 
as slowly, expertly and conscientiously cooked as the "roasts." The stews 
are compounded and devised both for the vegetarian, and inveterate 
11 h"at -eater, and that mortal, the combined vegetable and meat-eater; 
tliat is, some are composed of vegetables, and others of meat, but an 
admixture is never made. An epicure who enjoys both, can have both, 
hut served up separately. 

Chet held aloof from the feast and did not test the result of dili- 
gent, epicurean labor, in spite of all the praises and congratulations 
showered upon the 'cuist principals, much of which he overheard. 
He had staved off hunger by eating his full before setting out on his 
trip, and as he had scant appreciation of the repast that was under 
attack, he did not feel pangs of regret, as the 'cue devouring abated, 
by reason of the giving out of prepared victuals, and the assembling 
of the crowd to hear the speakers. 

Chet jostled forward with the slow and now sombre crowd (the 



'CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 



61 



process of assimilating their fill of 'cue, a part of digestion that 
knoclis the tenderfoot to pieces, had stricken out the rampant joviality; 
but the crowd was just saving themselves for events that needed 
boisterous attention. 

The large "speakers' platform" was down in a hollow, beautifully 




GEORGIA IS THE STATE FOR "CUE." 

surrounded by Southern nature, as well as Southern natures. The 
"orators of the night" were ranged in school-boy's free-hand half cir- 
cle, Irregular and crooked. All were seated or about to be so when 
Chet took up his site on the little knoll, from which coign of vantage 
he could espy all operations beneath him on the level lower down. 
On the center of the fair-sized elevated platform was a small ob- 



62 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

long table, with a smashed white pitcher, and a woebegone glass on 
it, the usual voice restorer receptacle, with possibly some soothing, 
exhilarating ingredients in its liquid contained within. 

Chet recognized but one of the seated natty, coolly attired gentle- 
men of consequence. To the extreme left, but two chairs from the end 
of the semi-circle, was "Mr." Quinne (one of those Southern rarities 
needing a titular prefix, but he was a hotel keeper). This individual 
Chet well remembered. As he sat, brushed and dressed up in his best, 
he decidedly smacked of the hotel variety. From the shadowy out- 
lines of his face, it looked as if he desired to step forth as an orator, 
but he had not the temerity to try the experiment and risk a poor 
talker's abject downfall. 

Beside him was a Spliuoy, puffed cheeked Southern planter, a 
heavyweight beyond question. On Quinne's (excuse me, "Mr." Quinne, 
that honorary title must never be neglected by outsiders) right, was» 
a genteel, glossy Southerner. This species of the Southern population 
are worse than that "white trash." They are all-around "bad men," 
but there are any number to counteract their stains, who are virtuous, 
and, as I might most expressively put it, are true as "SheflSeld" steel. 

The other characters gesticulating and chattering, were of un- 
sorted species, all interesting, and nearly all were acting on the sur- 
face, especially those who had stakes in the forecast. In the center 
of this congregation of amateurs and professional politicians, was 
the honorable Colonel Varnaby, just arrived, of course, in the com- 
pany of Colonel Sallwell, Squire Peabody, and another man of 
importance, by looks a French-American. They were endeavoring 
to utilize their pairs of arms as if they had fifty, but it is wonderful 
what acrobats we become under pressure. After the wild rush had 
subsided, the gentlemen set the example by dropping into their chairs 
and coming to order. The crowd was stilled. 

A gentleman with a florid countenance, arose from his chair and 
walked across the platform, speedily reaching the water pitcher, which, 
without ado, he lifted and poured some of its contents into the glass 
and drained it, then, quietly moving his lips nervously in preparation 
for enunciation, he at length commenced in opening the programme 
of the evening. 

"Gentlemen!" sonorously, and with forced distinctness, came his 
voice from vocal depths. "Allow me to present as the first speaker 
of the evening, a gentleman of great probity of character. The great 
befriender, Major Jackson." with a graceful willowy wave of his hand, 
indicating a brief, stout old gentleman, possessed of a benevolent, com- 
ical face and a bald pate. 




AMBITIOUS PRINCIPALS WHO PREACHED THEMSELVES HOARSE ON POLITICS. 



63 



64 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

The announcer retired and the Major, a popular planter, came 
forward, amid the cheers of the crowd, and cries of "here comes Major 
Hank!" With one long 'haw," the Major rushed along with his re- 
marks and borrowing from Chefs note book, I may, without copious- 
ness, reproduce phrases of the quaint half illiterate speech rendered. 

"Boys! We air heah to-night for the good o' ourselves, an' th' 
opposition as well. For they air beyond conjecturin' standin' in their 
own light, shadowin' themselves, they air their own wust enemies, 
as th' old sayin' goes, an' we air their only friends. For by keepin' 
them out o' office we prevent 'em ruinin' themselves. O' course, we 
will win, there can't be a person heah, who thinks diffierent, but we 
have reason to win. 

"I hev been selected one o' yo'r Aldermen, befo', an' have helped 
to make that body an' its executive, the Mayor, the revered corpora- 
tion it is, I b'lieve. Therefore, I speak with the persuasion o' whole- 
someness an' thinkfulness. 

"I doant condemn a thing wrong jest 'cause it looks wrong, but 
*cause it is wrong, found out by proof an' actual contact with it. 

"Th' other faction, it is true, have some of the ol' legislators in their 
tissuepaper opposition, but they air the dissenters, maligners and in- 
cumbrances o' th' party they were 'lected with. Their perfidy will be 
paid in bad coin by their new found allurin' allies, mark me. 

"Th' invulnerable, hard an' thick skulled reprobates o' family an' 
social standin' behin' th' brazen, outrageous scamp a whinin' fo' yo'r 
ballot, air led by a counterfeit gold ring in th' nose now, but their ring 
will feel brassy, an' th' flesh '11 be cut, then th' brass'll take effect, 
blood poisonin' will set in, and then will come the rupture o' relations 
between 'em all. This'll surely be, as the heavens above us, but doant 
low these fellers to get in office, an' then split, or th' city coffers '11 
be th' salve for their wounds in gen'ral. Therefor' I appeal to yo'r own 
self-respect as citizens o' Georgy to squash th' blamed combine o' swin- 
ish hogs, this alliance o* know nothin' sharpers! Thwart their schemes, 
with me and yo'r friends an' be dead agin sich blowed-up pollyticks." 

It is unnecessary to record more of this oratorical exposition, and 
as Chet neglected to take down the rest of the Major's similes, "plain," 
or local talk, his provincialisms contained in the unrecorded bulk of his 
address, we'll hop over it. Suffice to mention the Major ran on in 
the strain he commenced in, then wound up with effusion, greeted again 
with the noisy plaudits of his hearers. 

The announcer once more rushed forward, tackled the water pitcher 
(as if he had done the speech-making), and while the crowd was quiet- 
ing down, announced gravely and decorously: 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 65 

"Yo'U have th' honah o' hearin' Squire Peabody, who'll keep th' 
ball a rollin' smartly." "Squire Peabody!" came the anuouncement 
thunderingly, as the Squire rose stiffly, with a drawn smile, and crossed 
the planliS in measured glides. 

The Squire loosened his joints visibly, as he reached the fore part 
of the platform, and Chet grasped his pencil ready to follow closely 
in his wake. 

"Public-spirited citizens!" came in a strong natural tone, and the 
crowd bristled its ears. The cited remarks are narrowed, but suf- 
ficient to depict the Squire's temper: 

"Generally, we can say when a new competitor enters the field, 
*the more, the merrier,' but the axiom is left to oblivicHi in the ongoing 
mayoralty bubble. 

"We have before us a heterogenous combination of out-and-out 
rascals of varying types, capabilities and degrees, struggling with 
might and main to capture the prize and spoils of power— office— not 
the honah of elevation to representation of the people. 

"Will yo' allow these would-be political tyrants, despots, to supplant 
a municipal government that has always been gentle in authority and 
stern in justice? 

"Will yo' vote in these jugglers o' law and right, have humbuggery, 
pertinently handled by big-bug humbugs, the sole art of yo'r wielders 
of municipal might? 

"The big bugaboo of th' faction arrayed against us is a most un- 
scrupulous fellow, who is meshed in the marches of infamy. He is 
avowedly against the weal of the people. His sugar-coated fly-catch- 
ing w^ords are a poor covering of his deceit and trickery. 

"This intolerant, blatant 'patriot,' is a fit leader of the mass of 
cranks, soreheads and gamesters at his back. But he is but the os- 
tensible head. The real prime-mover and ram (though he has impro- 
vised the nominal leader as the battering ram) is a verbose and chief 
pen-scratcher of the insignificant paper of this city. He and his press 
are a disgrace to the community, and should be blotted out forever, 
as he will be. And if any of his representatives are heah, will they 
remember to report my words." The Squire paused, and a murmur 
came from the crowd, who started in to make a scrutiny of their 
neighbors, and Chet put on a front of tranquility, though inwardly 
fearing a rush for him, but his fears were soon allayed by the Squire's 
quick resumption of speech, and the cessation of uneasiness in the 
crowd. 

The Squire's voice fell melodiously on Chefs ear, and though its 
key was in variance to that of the siren's (and Chet had heard such 



66 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

a fairy's tones), yet it seemed lilie one, because of the relief that per- 
vaded bis sould and the ultra atmosphere as it knelled forth. The 
question and stir caused by it, had knocked the wind out of Chet, and 
for some moments both his brain and ready hand were paralyzed. 
Still, when he had recovered from the small-sized shock, he decided 
not to put more of the Squire's eloquence in black and white, and was 
in sorry doubt whether his notices so far vrould be acceptable (and 
he later found that except that Editor Bosbyell was enabled to have 
the opposition's oral efforts under his eye for comment and criticism, 
they never reached the printer's ink of the Daily Expounder), but, 
notwithstanding, his was not ardent labor lost. 

The Squire confined his language, and soon closed amid demon- 
strative approval of the bystanding crowd. 

Out shot the lithe announcer, whom Chet had learnt from commen- 
taries of near-by individuals, to be Doctor Felix Seaborn, as one worthy 
remarked, "a man o' science, an' if that bulgy head o' his'n doaut 
contain brains, I'm soggy." 

The erudite scientist announcer, reaching his base of operations, 
the table, dexterously, with a cliain lightning movement, poured out 
some of his evidently life-instilling liquid and drafted it Avith gusto 
and an audible succession of gulps. 

'"Next is the Honorable M. L. S. C. Browne, the great editor of the 
Citizen's Outcry! Another suave bow and will-o'-the-wisp wave and 
stiff jerk, bow, and the ''Hon. M. L. S. Browne, stepped forward from 
his seat, all eyes of his colleagues on the platform, and the crowd being 
fixedly placed upon him. 

Chet "sized" him up, a moderate-sized, raw-boned, bilious individ- 
ual, with pop-eyes, but he carried a good upper head, well arched ncse, 
and rounded chin. 

His large mouth opened as if he were about to yawn, but words in 
the nick of time seemed to come to the rescue, and a sound palmed off. 

Without salutation, this i>ersonage spoke in a decidedly cracked 
voice, and Avith interpolated wheezes, his vocal chords diciduously 
needed tuning, and from the desperate efforts the "Honorable" gentle- 
man strove forth one could feel certain he could not last through a 
boring lot of speaking, and he did not, although he held on as tenacious- 
ly as the nine-lived cat. Devoid of breaks, stoppages and coughs, the 
following might be submitted to the eye of the reader. 

"Re-voicing the sentiments and perception of the gentleman hold- 
ing this post before me, I can but condemn the personages that head 
the opposition, and who, judging from their mud-slinging methods 
and their past dastardly crioies against their fellow-men, will prove 
more obnoxious, more loathsome, if they reach the seat of power! 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 57 

"The Styled leader and header of the organized thieves opposing us, 
fighting with tongue and pocket as their arms, is a driveling idiot, eat- 
ing pie on a barrel of gunpowder, with a lighted fuse attached, which 
will cause an explosion that will blow him and his abettors to atoms. 

"The one who is really running the machine of manoeuvers, while 
standing in the guilty dark, as my noble compatriot has announced, 
the editor of the besmirched, scandal-mongering sheet of this city. 

"He is the one who will reap the lion's share of all gains, rightfully 
or ill-gotten; he is the captain of their piratical ship, the chief of their 
nefarious, underhand enterprises, the directory of their wickedness, 
the dictionary of their thoughts, the cyclopedia of their actions. 

"The desire of this culpable man for aggrandizement has impelled 
us to set forth these facts to dissuade our guileless citizens from en- 
tertaining his puppet as a candidate for an office it is more than hazard- 
ous to alloAv him to undertake, branded villain under the cohorts of 
a worse, more pronounced one, can only misuse the public trust. 

"Do not allow this cat's paw and his kith to make your untainted 
city politics, and ravage all that you have built and stored up! 

"Bind him and his dastardly fellows in ropes inflexible by vetoing 
their extravagant hopes of political power, by yo' sacred votes!" 

At this juncture the speaker's voice deserted him (which fact 
noted— for he rightly supposed that Bosbyell would use the fact in 
a pricking way among his editorial of the next day). 

Because of this vocal failure, the Hon. Browne made a bow, and 
cut his phlegmatic speech to an end. He was cheered vociferously, 
but every supporter present felt the unavoidable abbreviating of what 
would have been a fiery, inspiriting speech. 

Colonel Sallwell and Captain du Gane followed in turn with their 
oratory, but localism and personal aspersions flung at Graham's "wah 
record" constituted what they said in main and Chet decided to rest 
for the finale of the speechifying, when Colonel Varnaby would make 
the great oratorical effort of the evening. 

Dr. Seaborn, the announcer, rushed forward, swathed in perspira- 
tion, making a rush for the monopolized pitcher, and added a few 
more gulps to his reservoir (he had tackled the vessel between the 
two previous intermissions of speech). 

"Our friend, benefactor and candidate, Colonel Marius C. Varnaby," 
announced the doctor, with depthful gravity. 

The luminary of the evening came forth with a most methodic 
tread, that came with regular tramp on the planked platform. 

This man of soldierly bearing halted as if some invisible and in- 
audible voice had given the command. 



68 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

The crowd watched this martial being, to many of whom he seemed 
supernatural, and he sternly gave them a general's gaze, and then made 
a half inclinated nod as an acknowledgment of their presence. 

He loolsed, to Chet, to be well on the forties, if he had not already 
reached the half century mark. He was broad shouldered, and a 
physique naturally majestic, and which had been cultivated by his 
military connection. His face was prepossessing, but had common 
flaws of all humanity, which any reader of faces would denote. 

He opened his long-slitted, thin-lipped mouth with marked delib- 
eration, but his words tripped out quickly, yet clearly. 

"There is an old and trite aphorism, 'United we stand, divided we 
fall.' In it, it is acknowledged, all the discretion, strategy and valor 
of partyism and partisanship is contained. 

"Men, I do not untruthfully flatter our alliance by saying that we 
stand thus. We are united and standing to repulse the already with- 
ering enemy with our honest ballot blasts. 

"The rancid friends of obsequious Graham are already finding 
their iron corroding, and the rust covering their persons. The puerile 
apology for a man, with his ebullitions, is a spectacle of humiliation 
to honest friends, who perceive the quaking surrounding him. 

"He is surrounded by a court of over-confident jesters, and blind- 
eyed prophets. One of these sturdily paints himself a mortal of amaz- 
ing phophetic instinct, but I surmise that he will profit by wiping the 
ink from his arid pen. 

"This personage referred to is the one denounced by other previous 
speakers. His written anarchy of sentiment and purpose only excite 
the brainless and avaricious, confound the semi-fools and disgust the 
thoughtful and practical. 

"We would keep yo' out of the thraldom these monsters of iniquity 
would establish and perpetuate, if the reins of government fell into 
their horny hands. We Avill bind yo" to the mast of safety in this turbu- 
lent sea of opposition to political cleanliness and equity. Give yo'r 
hand and receive help. 

"As soon as I was put forward as a candidate, the scoundrels com- 
posing the opposition knew they could not work their ends with me 
and commenced to look another man to bolster up against me. 

"In their insi)ection they found all fair-brained men unwilling 
to fall into their rasping claws, but they at last hit on a miserable 
puppy who has long deigned to place liimself on my level and to force 
himself on the community by announcing himself as a candidate for 
political honors. 

"Honors! Little would this ill-bred puppy consider a position of 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 69 

trust an honor. He would use his power and influence only to gain 
riches and forget the interests of the people who elected him. He 
would prove a veritable scorpion, and like that poisonous insect he 
would not only inflict a poisonous bite, but would leave a track of 
his infamy behind. 

"Now comes the question, will yo' elect this poltroon, this base 
fraud, this political debaucher, who is piloted by a contemptible tra- 
ducer of all righteous men, who edits a so-termed reform paper, but 
which is in reality, the dirtiest, mangiest sheet anyone would come 
across, if he travels from pole to pole. 

"Will yo' elect such a personification of baseness? Will yo' elect 
the tool of a man that attacks all honest, God-fearing men, and who 
attempts by a bold front to force his abominable self upon yo'? 

"I ask yo' in justice to yo'rselves, in justice to the community at 
large, in justice to unborn thousands, to show your antipathy to this 
contaminated being and others of his ilk, by turning him down at the 
polls. 

"Show the outside world that none but men of honor, of eminence, 
of repute can hold your exalted positions, and that such reptiles, 
such callous villains as Graham represents, must expect to meet a po- 
litical death at the polls." 

The pristine calmness of the open-mouthed, bated-breathed crowd 
was pitched at a heat beyond the thermometer, and pandemonium 
held sway, as the Colonel concluded his terse speech. 

Chet immediately started to get out of the grove, knowing that 
except for a carousal and extenuation and the completion of the 'cue, 
that all the orators of note would retain their wind. Possibly a few 
would-be political lights would fire off a few shaky impromptu speeches, 
but Chet had pressed enough into his weary note-book, and did not de- 
sire to wear himself and pencil out on reporting the trash of such weak 
speakers as "Mr." Quinne and his kind (as he comprehensively graded 
them). 

Clear of the grove, he struck out for home, and soon heard a 
"halloo" in his rear, carelessly turning his head, he saw "Dig" coming 
along after him at a dog-trot. 

"Hoi' on, 'taint no use hurryin'," came the breathless remark from 
"Dig," as he closed up with Chet. 

"No," smilingly rejoined Chet, "don't know as there is, but I want 
to get out of that verbal dynamite, and those madcap fellows down 
there." 

"Ugh!" grunted "Dig," stopping by Chefs side, swabbing his flushed 
face, and then continuing, pantingly, "Old Nick, himself, would have 



70 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTEK. 

sent his favorite ogre for a fan, if he'd been crammed up on that dirt- 
stuck, tobacco-mucked crowd, like I've been." 

"I wasn't as unfortunate as that, old chap," said Chet, as they 
trudged along together. "I wasn't encumbered or hampered by the 
crowd, but I got the essence of them, and the aroma, with that ad- 
mixture of fiery scathing speech, doled out by that array of orators, 
knocked me up. By jove! Those fellows looked dangerous with their 
wild looks, and I know they carried a plentiful supply of arms." 

"Yes, th' crowd of gabbers they had was enough to send a body o' 
sense plum 'stracted, but those crazy fools with guns weren't danger- 
ous, Chet," replied "Dig," depreciatingly. 

"Well, in England, all fellows learn boxing proficiently, and the use 
of good fists, I esteem a better medium than revolvers, shotguns and 
bowie knives." 

"Yes, but yo' see th' weapons act as a sort of tonic on bad feelings, 
an' we must hev tonics in hot climates." 

"Yes, but I thought your Southern mode of speech, when you are 
out of sorts was bitters enough." 

Both laughed heartily at this jocular hit, and "Dig" said: "Yo're 
right, Chet, I reckon." 

"Say, said Chet, with abruptness, "you must be a good mathema- 
ticians." . ^ l"^'!T— 

"Why?" innocently asked "Dig." 

"Because you're always reckoning, don't you know." 

"Dig" saw the point, and smiled sickly, but quickly answered: 

"Yo' don't seem to think us good teachers, though." 

"Why?" puzzledly asked Chet, in turn. 

" 'Cause, yo'r alius askin' 'don't yo' know,' " and "Dig" laughed 
a whooping laugh, as he planted this retaliating rib-roaster, which 
made Chet join with him, but decidely less vociferously. 

The punning ended, and at last the friends separated, making a) 
bee-line for their respective homes and their sanctified couches. 



CHAPTER Vn, 



NEWS AND EVENTS OF THE NEXT DAY. 

Chet reached the office in proper shape and at an early hour the 
following morning, but Bosbyell had preceded him some time, and 
was working at a race horse lick, seventy strokes to the minute with 
his enchanted stub pen. 

He was in his shirt sleeves, as he always was when doing "sweat- 
ing writin'." "Dig" was diving into boxes of papers, and was chew- 
ing the poetic but empty-airy cud of reflection, over a long stretch of 
half rolled papers. 

Chet noiselessly bounded over to Bosbyell's desk with alacrity, 
and as silently laid his note book upon it. Bosbyell sort of wake up 
to his surroundings as Chet did this, and after blinking his eyes a 
few seconds and stretching the muscles of his face, he broke forth 
half aloud, and more as if he were addressing himself, "Here with 
your reports. Let me run over them." Suiting the action to the word, 
he snatched up the book and perused its contents sharply. 

Tiny winks, side-tracked exclamations came from his lips as his 
eyes traveled on over the sheets. Then he ran off his monotone ejacu- 
lations into depthful reading, and after completing his examination 
of the sheets, he fell into greater abstracted thinking. 

"Phew!" came at last a loud intended-to-be-heard outburst. "These 
pages, Chet, are saturated with absolute sordid rot. They're one co- 
agulated clot of vituperations." 

Noticing a troublous cast overspreading Chefs face, at what he 
thought light censurism of a poor lot of work, Bosbyell went on re- 
assuringly, "But yo' were immaculately right to bring this in." Chet 
breathed gladsomely. 

"How did your 'cue prosper?" asked Chet facetiously. 

"Up to expectations, if not beyond. We'll own everything yet," 
answered the editor, with a slight air of braggadocio. 

"Glad to hear it. And though I've been out of the whirlpool, I 
wish you the best of luck, and that your boat don't get swamped." 

The editor pulled out a drawer, tumbled out of it some clasped 

71 



72 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

papers, tossed them around, and selected from them a fastened set, 
of brown colored sheets, and then handed them across to Chet. 

"Read that speech o' mine, yo' see if I didn't hit the nail, and 
smash the other fellow's fingers, at the same identical time," said 
Editor Bosbyell. 

Bosbyell returned to labor and Chet set off reading the speech, 
which ran: 

"Men of Zodgeton. Colonel Varnaby, the shoddy tin-horn aspirant 
for the mayoralty honors, considers our friend— also an aspirant— as 
having disregarded all unwritten laws of society in presuming to 
place himself on his level! I would lili;e the Colonel to know that I 
consider him so far beneath our candidate, and every honest Demo- 
cratic man, for that matter, that if I had the alternative of stepping 
into knee-deep mud or on his vitiated carcass, I would prefer mud. 
A thousand times, mud! 

"This aristocratic popinjay, who has received whatever prestige 
he commands, by awing the multitude by his pomposity (and a great 
part of us refuse to be awed), expects to sweep us out in the coming 
fight, but he will soon realize his hallucination, and his loathsome 
confederates, who think they command the situation, will sneak into 
quietude from their bullying foundation. 

"My condensed opinion of Varnaby is that his is of the brotherhood 
of those highly prized and cultured animals, the asses. 

"There is an incident described in the Inspired Book, that fits to a 
nicety as a simile to the mooted situation, it is the story of Samson 
and the Philistines. 

"The great thewed Samson being attacked by the Philistines, and 
having no weapon at hand, seized upon the jawbone of an ass, and 
with mighty blows dashed out the brains of his desperate foes. 

"To form the simile, that this campaign presents, I would liken 
Colonel Graham to the mighty Samson, and then compare Yarnaby's 
backers to the Philistines, placing Varnaby, himself, as the skeleton 
of the ass, whose jaw bone Samson used as his weapon. 

"Varnaby's jaw bone, which emits the volumes of quixotic words 
that he and his friends term speeches, are our surest weapons of de- 
fense, and our ultimate victory is assured. 

"When it comes to the point of decision, I can safely say it is far 
worse to have an ass than a scoundrel in office for the scoundrel would 
at least try to cover his tracks and from fear of detection and pun- 
ishment would be deterred from open rascality, while an ass would 
be liable to be under the thumb of rascals shrewd and smart, who 
would let him run the risk unknowingly of falling under the ban 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 78 

(while they thrust into the caves of treasure no rascal would dare 
to openly penetrate.) 

"The Varnaby crowd orators have tacked up w^ord pictures of the 
disasters our seating in office would entail, but their pessimistic warn- 
ings are in positive contrast with their optimistic Avord painting of the 
prosperity that will be brought forward by their success. With that 
man, that I have accused of being an ass, only an ass nothing more 
or less, in nominal power, you would soon discover what nourishment 
would accrue to your commonwealth. 

''The dissolute, uncouth opponent of our honorable gentleman of 
sterling worth Colonel Jefferson Hadry Graham, is flattered by his 
nomadic forces with historic Marc Antony's appellation, 'the noblest 
Roman of them all,' which they parade upon their banners, in glaring 
inscriptions, as well as in their splurging, ineloquent oratorical effects, 
because the pampered figure-head that they hold up for public appro- 
bation is gilded with a non-plebeian name, romantically culled from 
those of the old Roman heroes, whom this personage disgraces as a 
namesake. 

"The prominent factor in ancient history, ruined in name is the 
celebrated Marius Cassius, who has undoubtedly had many fits in 
his grave, caused by the reckless parental baptismal selection for 
this pedantic fossil, Colonel Marius Cassius Varnaby. 

"Now, boys, tap the liquor, tackle the 'cue, and digest both my 
words and the spread at the same time." 

"I tell you," said Chet after short contemplation, "that is a cutting, 
sanguine speech. I would have given anything to have heard your 
delivery." 

Bosbyell beamed with gratification, as Chet said this and returned 
the papers. 

"Did Squire Yorde and Captain Ogdane speak?" asked Chet. 

"Yes, indeed. Th' Capt'n went off with a long end of the honors 
and th' Squire made a sumptuous, long-winded speech." 

"I conjectured that the Squire would address windedly," pointedly 
said Chet, of the monstrous Squire, and Bosbyell appreciated it. 
* ******** 

The work that had piled up for the staff of the Expounder was 
nearly mountainous, and all pitched in like zealots. 

The nominating convention met in due time, and, after a stormy 
session, Colonel Varnaby was defeated by a tight squeeze, and the 
Graham faction, shaved through on everything, and therefore there 
was joy in the camp of the Expounder, and correspondingly the Outcry 
people were downcast at their protege, Varnaby's downfall, with his 
standbys. 



74 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

Bad blood had been stirred up by the campaign of the factions, 
but none had been spilt, and Chet was not grieved that bloodshed had 
been averted. But It is never too late to do anything, and so it proved. 

Two weeks after the nomination of Colonel J. H. Graham, the 
"staff" of the Expounder were occupied and perspiring over routine 
work, but the editor had grown listless, and was busy drawing shaky 
designs, etc., as Chet crossed over with a paper to discuss it with him. 

"What on earth are those Chinese drawings?" quizzed Chet, be- 
fore he commenced. 

"Them," said the editor, pointing to them with the back of his 
pen. "They're they're, well— er, I call 'em nothin's," he said, rather 
desperately and ironically. 

"You don't ." At this be was interrupted by the clang of the 

town fire bell. 

"Hello! What's that?" came from the editor, who sprang to the 
window, threv/ open the sash, and poked his head far out. 

"Thunder! Boys! The Outcry building is on fire," the editor an- 
nounced most startlingly. 

A precipitate rush was made by the "staff" down to the place 
of flames. The town was out in force, and the old worn engine, hose 
apparatus, ladders and the rest of the paraphernalia of the town "fire 
department" was rushed to the scene, the men of the town assisting 
the fire brigade. 

Counseled by Bosbyell, the members of the Expounder refrained 
from running in with the rest. 

' Yo'll only provoke a quar'll, if yo' get mixed up with those hot- 
headed fellers, they're nearly fiends, now that they see their property 
in smoke." 

So, against their impulses they followed the instinct, or, rather, 
the knowledge of the editor to avoid trouble. 

The fire, under a little breeze that found it, gained headway, de- 
spite all measures of prevention, and as the wood, sun-dried, the struc- 
ture kept on like a tinder-box until its ashes marked its site. 

"That settles that blabber Browne for a while, anyway," satisfiedly 
and cruelly coolly, Chet thought, as they retired from the ruined spot. 

Excitement was all over the town, and all tongues were agog 
about the fire. Canards of all kinds soared through the air. Terrible 
stories, mysterious plots, were conjured up, as having caused the loss 
of the Outcry Building. 

Bosbyell declared that he scented trouble, and as a precaution, left 
three e^iployes to watch and guard the building during the night, 
and furthermore asked if all were armed. Chet was not. 




AN ALARM OP FIRE— "THE DAILY OUTCRY" OFEICE IN FLAMES. DISCOVERY MADE 
BY 'THE DAILY EXPOUNDER'S" FORCE FROM THE WINDOW. 



75 



76 "CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

"Look a' here, Cbet, yo'd better carry this little trusty," he said, 
seriously, opening a drawer, displaying a shining revolver. "I carry 
'em, an' yo' may be sure I won't commit suicide by not drawin' quickly 
enough, if I have to." 

He took a good-sized revolver from each hip pocket, and later a 
smaller one from his vest pocket. 

"I won't plunge into powder, my dear sir, for any slight provoca- 
tion, but I'll defend myself, with nature's weapons to the last extrem- 
ity," sturdily replied Chet, scoffing at the idea of carrying rirearms. 

A half sneering look was penciled on Bosbyell's face, but it was 
but momentary, being evicted, and a cast of pity succeeding it. 

"lo're yo'r own boss, Chet. But yo' aren't keerin' fo' healthy 
advice," was the solitary comment of the editor. 

Chet was level-headed in refusing, so his uncle afterward told 
him, and as he was never singly molested or insulted, he also con- 
cluded hi^ reply a piece of horse sense. 

The next day an uneasy calmness was felt in the busily engaged 
Expounder office. The editor was positive trouble was brewing, and 
he and his "fightin' " assistants had their "guns" close by and their 
sight, roving though it might be, pounced upon them at every stray 
breathing spell from work. 

Gathered in the office was the editor at his desk, Mark Bosbyeli, 
the associate editor at his desk, '"Dig" and Chet at their double desk, 
in the far part of the room, a sort of annex. 

The buzz of the flies alone disturbed the stillness, and bothered 
the inditers. But soon came a. more pronounced breakage. From the 
halhvay, came the muffled noises of footsteps and persons shuffling 
up the stairs. 

The editor leaped to the door and slammed it open, he fell back 
a few steps and cried out the alarm, "They're here." 

All made a clench for their pistols and waited. Chet refusing 
"Dig's" proffered pea-shooter, and remaining "gunless," to "Dig's" 
chagrin. 

"Yes, we're heah," came a stentorian voice from the hallway. 

"Yo' bet—" came another voice, which chopped itself off. 

This was followed by a bodily intrusion of several men headed by 
Browne of the Outcry— all with revolvers in their hands. 

Bosbyell's brow darkened, and his lower lip slightly quivered with 

rage, as he ordered fiercely, "Pack out o' heah, or I'll bore yo' by " 

He raised his revolver for action. 

"The presumption," snorted Browne, "of yo'— yo' snarling poodle." 

They glowered at each other like gladiators, when Browne sneer- 
ingly said, "I've a mind to expectorate in yo'r face." 




CLASH IN "THE DAIL,\ 



OFFICE BETWEEN THAT STAFF AND THOSE OP 



•THE DAILY OUTCRY' , WHO CAME IN FOR A ROW. 



77 



78 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

This was au irritant that caused a non-churchgoer's swearing affray 
that would make the mild curser's hair lift itself with astonishment, 
the equi-balanced individual's head-covering would simply turn af- 
frighted somersaults (as Chefs was). 

After exhausing the vocabulary of blasphemy, the lips, that had 
poured forth these irreconcilable volleys of abuse now urged fight, 
not by oaths, but by accusation and twitting. 

"Yo' cringing adder yo' know full well yo' fired the Outcry build- 
ing," came from the now nearly insane ex-editor of that lost paper. 

"Yo' skunk of skunks, yo' know yo' did the trick, yo'self. Yo're 
a firebug. Yo' know yo've committed arson, an' are tryin' to smirch 
an honest man with yo're incendiarism," screeched forth the enraged 
Bosbyell. 

Browne madly and hoarsely cried: "I'll blow the wind out o' yo', 
yo' cowardly booby!" On the last w^ord, all guns up, and bang! bang! 
whang! was the order. 

The din was terrific. Chet, transfixed with horror, crouched behind 
a pillar. Men rushed forward, over chairs and tables, knocking and 
spilling them over in their speed. 

Suddenly came the sound of shots and imprecations from the hall- 
way, and foot of the stairway. Chet guessed that the friends of Bos- 
byell were coming to his rescue from without and within— that the 
printers from their work rooms were the inside succor. Chet heard 
Bosbyell's voice, chokedly call out, through the smoke and cries, "Come 
on, boys!" A charge and precipitate retreat in the midst of shots and 
fire betokened the withdrawing of the assaulting party. 

The smoke began to lift and solemnity prevailed, the little garri- 
son's bullets being spent, reports in the street could be distinctly, 
though after the just past uproar and blasting, it seemed to Chet, 
faintly heard. 

Chefs eye caught that of ferocious, now excessively pallid Browne, 
who was evidently pain-maddened; he lay sprawling on the floor, with 
one arm lying helpless and limply. His clothes were torn and soiled, 
including his generally immaculately clean shirt front. 

Near him was Bosbyell, in a sitting posture, on the floor, beside 
an overturned chair, against which he was reclining heavily, with 
a suppressed pained expression, his countenance being lobsterly red, 
and his eyes dilating fiercely and spitting fire at Browne. Bosbyell 
was tightly clinching his right arm, which hung helpless, limp, by 
his side, blood streaming in rivulets from four shot holes in it. From 
his leg was another stream, coming from a wound in the calf, and 
which was running down his trouser leg. His coat was ripped up the 



"CHET," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 79 

back, and ink was coursing down its front. It was inexplicable how 
the ink bottle at his feet reached him. Altogether, he was a gory^ sight, 
and Chet felt that the Expounder would be editorless for a time, un- 
less someone temporarily discharged his duties. 

Over in the corner of the room were two men lying across each 
other, groaning distressedly, both hard hit. As they were strangers 
to Chet, and as revolvers lay in a narrow radius of them, and as they 
were undoubtedly injured in the little pitched battle, they must be, 
he reasoned, friends of Browne and the onslaughters. 

"Dig" was at the window, having an excited warlike look, and 
two smoking revolvers in his hands. He did not seem hurt. 

Poor Mark lay across his desk breathing heavily and convulsively, 
catching his side and moaning in excruciating agony. 

"Dig" put one of his revolvered hands up to his eyes, as if to 
brush a hazy mist before them away, and then attempted to dart for- 
ward, but toppled over weakly, showing he, too, had been hit. Chet 
began to think he was "reached" also, but felt himself all right, and 
without self-examination, ran to his disabled friend's aid. 

"I've got it in the foot, Chet. Jest clipped me. That's all," he 
said, quietly and brokenly. Chet assisted him up, and he essayed 
walking, which he succeeded in doing with a limp. As he tried this 
feat on feet, he uttered a bitten-ofif exclamation, and rubbed his arm, 
near the socket, with a lightning movement. It was another "clip." 

"Are yo' hurt, Chet?" he was not unmindful to enquire. 

"Oh, I don't think so. Nothing serious my boy, if I am. But these 
balls chipped parts of that friendly pillar that acted as my armor, 
and some whizzed through my clothes," showing a just discovered 
rent in his coat-sleeve," but I guess my permit for this isn't rescinded, 
yet, my dear fellow. Yo're all bunged up, don't you know, though." 

"Oh, no. But poor Bosbyell and Mark are." 

A weak voice, that of Bosbyell's, struck their ears. 

"Yes, I'm hit; but take a look at Mark, won't you, Chet?" 

"Certainly, sir," came the respectful reply, as Chet hopped over to 
Mark, who had lost consciousness. 

Mark had a serious wound in the side, and one in the foot. Chet 
set about to alleviate the sufferings of both friend and foe. He un- 
loosed Mark's jacket, secured willing assistance from incoming friends, 
and set about restoring the young man to his senses, at the same time 
directing the men to look after the rest, including the maimed Browne 
and his two men. 

The sheriff, sawbones, and other "healers," soon got on the ground, 
and succeeded in making life miserable for the anguished men, but 
they came out of the ordeal all right. 



80 "CHBT," A SOUTHERN NEWSPAPER REPORTER. 

Mending of bodies was the chief industry of the town, but mend- 
ing the feelings and agnosticism was barred out. 

Chet, with the lame assistance of "Dig"— lame in several senses, 
as he could not work steadily, as a result of his wounds, and their 
shock to his nervous system, attended successfully to a daily issue of 
the Expounder. 

But after some time, the "staff" was in working order again, albeit 
that Mark's wounds had an effect upon his health, but it was set at 
naught. 

Browne, the fire-eater, decided to take to a new clime, and went 
to the Carolinas, but, although the Outcry has reached its destiny. 
Colonel Varnaby and his friends remain. 

Chet, when I met him last a few years ago, was associate editor 
of the Daily Expounder, with old Bosbyell as principal. Mark having 
died of consumption. 

Chet seemed, to my visage, the same old friend I had known in 
England, but a little more advanced in years. 

He had discarded "don't you know," for "I reckon," and "you" 
for "yo' " and had obtained a few new, and lost a few old character- 
istics, in keeping with his surroundings. 

THE END. 



CHATS WITH MY FRIEND 
THE BRAHMIN. 



NOTE. 
In a box, where valuable curios, mementos and presents that had been 
gathered from the four corners of the world by Mr. John Jack and his 
devoted wife, Annie Firmin Jack, were kept, and which contained among 
many other things scrap books, valuable correspondence, etc., these two 
precious volumes were also deposited for safe keeping. This receptacle 
was in the Merchants House, 413 and 415 North Third street, Philadelphia, 
and was stolen from said premises, or said to be ; notwithstanding all 
manner of efforts through the police and detective systems and news- 
papers, advertisements, etc., were made, no clue was ever obtained from 
the missing treasure, so that the dastardly thief or thieves must have cast 
these precious documents — to at least two persons — into a fire as so much 
waste paper. This villainous crime is why these pages contain but one 
volume of his interesting and important '*Chats with My Friend the 
Brahmin." 

HUGH COYLE, Compiler. 








83 



INTRODUCTION. 



Purushotam Rao Telang was our guest at the seaside during the 
summer of 1894. My parents, during their extended sojourn, and trav- 
els in the Orient, had met his family in Bombay, India, and had formed 
a very pleasant acquaintance; consequently, when Mr. Telang called 
upon us, father was extremely happy to renew the friendship, and 
invited him to our cozy little summer home, that had been fitted up 
with a great many East Indian curios, which were both a surprise 
and a pleasure to Mr. Telang. 

All through the summer, we were constantly talking about the 
East. I became deeply interested in the subject, and conceived the 
idea of writing down, and thus preserving the facts that I elicited 
through Telang's conversations. Telang approved heartily of the 
proposition; so, after each chat, I made copious notes. Having faith- 
fully written them up, I submit them to the reading public, feeling 
assured that the chats will, in many respects, open their eyes to the 
true condition of India, and its favorite religion— Brahmiuism. 

It may be well to state here, that Telang is not an ordinary Hindoo, 
but a man well educated in the old, native, Brahmin, priest fashion, 
subsequently learning English at a college in Bombay. Besides being 
a natural born artist and musician, he has acquired an extensive knowl- 
edge of the important sciences. Judging from our conversation with 
him, and the great amount of knowledge he gave abundant evidence of, 
he must have thoroughly grounded himself in the history and sociol- 
ogy of the entire civilized world. He spoke English fluently, tersely 
and eloquently, in the most choice, graphic language, and with but a 
slight accent; furthermore, his speech was made extremely quaint, 
and charming to the ear, by his musical voice, and Oriental idioms. 

At the time of which I write, he was a man about forty-five, 
of slim, delicate build, but possessed of a quiet, reserved dignity that 
immediately arrested the attention of the observer. His face was 
nearly always placid, but ever expressive; his forehead broad and 
high, betokening Intelligence, his nose large and well shaped, denoting 
practicability; his chin firm, and determined; under long curly black 
lashes, beneath still darker eyebrows, his dark eyes beamed forth a 
bright, kind, cheery look that lighted up his otherwise rather sombre 
counteoance; his mouth, overcovered by a raven black mustache, 

6 8§ 



S6 CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 

was well formed and clear cut, when slightly drawn revealing a set 
of most exquisitely shaped and pearly white teeth. In short, he is a 
typical representative of the highly educated Hindoo of the highest 
caste. Gentleness, kindliness itself, he is an embodiment of true po- 
liteness; not possessed of the superficial fawning and suavity, common 
to the low class of Orientals. It was no wonder, that during his visit 
with us, we became greatly attached to him. 

Telang came of a family of the highest social status, his father being 
a revenue officer and magistrate; his cousin, who recently died, was 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Bombay; and he, himself, was 
employed in the service of the British Government, though his early 
education, and caste, fitted him for the Brahmin priesthood. 

Telang decided, when the World's Columbian Exposition was about 
to be opened in Chicago, to come to the United States, see this strange 
land, form material and individual ideas of the outside world, re- 
turn home, and use his knowledge and experience for the welfare 
of his countrymen. Surely no motive could be purer and higher in 
aim than this, but there was a great obstacle in his path. All believers 
in Brahminism are forbidden to leave their native soil, on the penalty 
of being ostracized from all friends and relations on returning— not 
even being allowed to associate with the lowest castes of Hindoos, 
who are taught to look upon a wanderer, in lands beyond the sea, 
as contaminated. Fortunately, modern influence and the liberal ideas 
entertained among the progressive Brahmins have, in some degree, 
lessened the enormity of this social and religious offense. So, finally, 
Telang and a friend, although firm adherents to Brahminism, deter- 
mined to come to America, being willing to brave social ostracism, 
and endure any penance they might have to perform on their return, 
so long as they might accomplish the purpose of their journey. But, 
as Telang said to me, in spite of the high standing of his, and his 
friend's family, their own personal record, and the advanced and un- 
sullied object of their mission, the old orthodox people will not accept 
them back into their caste upon their return; therefore, it was indeed 
a noble and patriotic sacrifice for their country's good. 

Telang visited the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago, and 
then went to San Francisco, California, where he had the additional 
pleasure of witnessing the Mid-Winter Exposition. There Teland pro- 
posed a Musical Congress of the World, but, on account of prevailing 
unfavorable circumstances and conditions, he was unable to carry out 
the project successfully. However, his interviews on the subject, by 
the representatives of the leading San Francisco papers, rendered 
bim well known throughout the Pacific Coast. Notably at the Stan- 



CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 87 

ford University, Palo Alto, California, by whose President, David Starr 
Jordan, he was highly appreciated and endorsed. 

Telang had also made an extensive and successful lecturing tour, 
from which he was resting at the seashore. 

After leaving us at the close of the season, he went to New York 
and wrote for the Forum, and then, I believe, sailed for Europe to con- 
tinue his observations. 

To me he said at parting: "Remember, my boy, that my object, 
in encouraging you to gain all the knowledge you can about India, 
is, of course, for your own mental improvement, but most of all, to en- 
able you, when speaking of her, to speak intelligently. So that when 
you hear her unjustly abused, as she so often is, you can defend her, 
and I expect you to do so at all times. 

I replied: "Telang, gratitude alone, for the useful information 
you have given me, would force me to follow out your wishes, and 
as you have enlisted my sympathy in every way, you may rest as- 
sured that I am, and always will be, ready to plead and defend the 
cause of India." 

The publishing of these chats is the first step in fulfillment of the 
promise, and I hope and trust that it will not be the last; it shall not 
be, if our Creator sees fit to grant me those precious boons, health 
and strength to continue in the course. 



CHAT L 

TELANG DISCOURSES ON CONQUERORS, 

''Although, while in India, I had noted the energy of foreigners, 
which far surpasses us, yet when I arrived in this country, I was be- 
wildered beyond measure with the bustle and noise of your cities. 

"The English are an energetic race, but, without any flattery, you 
Americans must be graded away ahead of them as 'hustlers.' 

"Energy is indeed a great characteristic; the possession of it made 
the English speaking people first in power, progress, and nearly 
everything; the want of it has made India, and the Hindoo race de- 
generate to their present state. But you have had, have, and no 
doubt, always will have, existing conditions that must keep you on your 
excellent footing; you have a rugged life inspiring climate, and, great- 
est of all, you Americans, of these United States, have succeeded 
in establishing on a firm basis, a republic with all that its name im- 
plies. These facts you all correctly declare, have placed you first 
as an unspotted, unrestrained nation. Other powers of the New 
and Old world, have attained liberty to a large degree, but none can 
truthfully rank with you as a totally democratic government. 

"All the potent and solid nations, have been created in vigorous 
climates, peopled by energetic races, who have thriven under free 
forms of government. But in what comparatively few parts of this uni- 
verse does one find these essential qualities centered. The lack of these 
indispensable possessions has made dear old India, though rich in 
land and numerical strength, the puny, pitied nation she is. Pitied, 
the Mord darts through me like a spear, and cuts me to the quick. 
To think that such a grand country should occupy such an abominable 
position, which places her entirely at the mercy, or nearly so, of the 
scoffer and defamer; this beautiful division of the globe that should 
be a perpetual paradise, but has been so frequently devastated and 
ruined agriculturally and financially, by ravishing hordes, and na- 
tions, that now she is reduced to her present straits, a mere skeleton 
of the far distant past. But, to my own mind, majestic, august, as she 
has been in her day, ranking first in everything, she will yet redeem 
herself and place her people on the rock of substantiality. 

"We, as a race, cannot hope to possess the energy of the Western 
pations. A people living in a land of Intense heat, and having an 



GHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 89 

ofttlme malignant climate, can hardly expect to have or to acquire the 
wonderful, untiring quickness, indefatigable perseverance, and tenacity 
in physical labor that you have. But, although our climate is enervat- 
ing in the extreme, many of us are endowed with that virtue, mental 
energy, and this fact will, in time, accomplish the redemption of India. 

"There have been illustrious minds in my uatai country. Both her 
sons and her daughters have achieved great deeds, but of what short 
benefit to the people, and how few, and far between as you have it, have 
they mostly been. This has been due to the gross ignorance, cruelty 
and despotism of her conquerors, who have been many, and who have 
nearly always ruled her, until now, a civilized power, England, has 
gained control of her. 

"The Hindoo people were launched forth on this earth in a superior 
state to the outside world, but for her terrible invaders, and subju- 
gations, she would still range among the highest, instead of being 
fallen in might and prestige. Under ignoble conquerors, and their 
satraps' grinding heel, India has been beaten and crushed into sub- 
mission, though she has fought heroically against it. She has passed 
through the throes of every conceivable type of warfare, and has sus- 
tained the full brunt of what war entails; their harm is simply ap- 
palling, when one reviews her list of injurers, who with loot and 
glory-seeking lust, have despoiled her dearest, richest treasure wanton- 
ly and barbarously, sapping all the spirit out of the downtrodden peo- 
ple, by their tyrannical suzerainty. 

"These wanton, licentious tyrants would have destroyed her mor- 
ally, but her discerning guides, her revered moralists, have piloted her 
people away from the impending engulfments in iniquity. This is 
proof, though at this period ruined in fortune, that she can yet mend 
her fabric and become a luminary of the world. For a people, who 
can be so sagely led by their own, and can follow so implicitly in 
the right, in the face of terrible, continually confronting temptations 
to induce them to forsake purity and chastity, must be one of her- 
culean moral strength. They are, indeed, for they have gallantly borne 
up in the worst of martyrdom, and have crusaded against viciousnesy 
whenever they have had the leeway and resources to do so. 

"Epitomizing India's memorable invaders and conquerors, I might 
mention, to give you some comprehension of the constancy of them, 
the invasion of Darius Hystaspes, over five centuries before the Chris- 
tian era; that of Alexander the Great in 327 B. C; the Tartar inva- 
sion; the Scythian invasion, extending from 100 B. C. to the dawn of 
the sixth century, A. D.; the Mohammedan period of supremacy, 
commencing from the first successful inroad by Subuktigin, in 996 



90 GHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 

A. D., until the destruction of the Mogul Empire by the Persian Nadir 
Shah, 1739; Mahmud of Ghazni (a zealous and ambitious conqueror on 
the behalf of the Faith of Islam, and son of the Moslem general Sub- 
uktigin) began invasion after invasion, seventeen in all, in A. D. 1001, 
in each of which, he invariably won, aggrandizing and fortifying his 
power by wresting riches from the subdued Hindoos. In the latter part 
of the fourteenth century, came the terrible man Tamerlane, who 
wrought death and destruction broadcast; Baber conquered in 1526, 
founding the historic Mogul Empire, which brought forth some able 
rulers at iirst; then came Nadir Shah of Persia; following him, in 
1761, came Ahmed Shah al Abdali (a former general under Nadir 
Shah). 

"India has ever been the cynosure of all eyes. The sensual pleas- 
ures her riches afforded, made her the legitimate (?) prey of all; the 
disgorgement of her wealth has everlastingly been the loathsome 
aim of her invaders. 

"The people of this land of paradise, subdued era after era, and 
placed in the toils, naturally became embittered against their harsh 
grasping masters, who never relaxed their despotic ruling, but con- 
tinued to absorb the good, the heart of their territory they had irrupted 
and made subservient. Moreover, these arbitrarily empowered op- 
pressors, with their petty, underling despots, repaid their nominally 
dignified subjects, in reality abject slaves, by throwing upon them the 
vices of dissolutism, and the refuse of the real subjects of their abso 
lute government. Are you astounded or even surprised that many 
of the Hindoos are violent dissenters, and opposers of foreign doc- 
trines and methods. 

"Besides the Oriental iucursors, we have had numerous European 
invaders and conquerors, who have assailed our beloved India with 
ultra voracity. The Dutch, the Danes, the Portuguese, the French 
and the British, all fighting like the most rabid animals— ravenous 
wolves— once ferociously attacking the new found prey, and then, after 
killing it, fighting among themselves for the carcass. 

"Manifold, and unnecessary sufferings were subsequently imposed 
on unhappy India (the much contested prize, the diamond in the 
rough), by brigandish, piratical European hosts. Advanced, and God- 
fearing nations, have concocted the direst villainies, heaped them upon 
her hapless, unoffending head and then have calmly, cold-bloodedly 
allowed them to work their destruction on her people, her lands, her 
all, while they, themselves (these inordinate gluttons) endeavored to 
appease their rapacious appetites for gain, unmindful of the rack 
and ruin they had fettered on their enfeebled, unaggressive victim. 



CfiATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 9 

"These evils, these stigmas, and curses, these trespassing de- 
stroyers have fanned into a flame, are among others, the most heinous 
opium and liquor traffics; England has introduced, organized and 
monopolized the first, whilst the latter has been led foremost by her, 
being meagerly shared in by the other powers, who have only held 
Indian possessions of limited extent, and who retained them but a 
brief period. 

"Not only has Great Britain put these suicidal weapons in India's 
hands, and forced her (for she resisted) to learn and develop their use, 
but she has promulgated the enslaving opium, forcing the vile drug on 
much more unfortunate China. 

"India is the involuntary producer of the opium (that is unfortu- 
nate and infamous enough), the Mongolian Empire is the principal 
consumer, but the British Government (most contemptible, and most 
infamous) is the sole purchaser of the accursed stuff, she is the guilty 
reaper of these ill gotten gains, gains procured by the debasement and 
suffering of sister lands. 

"Fortunately, India only produces, and does not consume the 
damning narcotic. But despite this fact, that she is not the drug's 
vassal, she feels the pangs of the wickedness greater than the shame 
of a criminal besmirchment of her formerly clear name. 

"Her richest soil is devoted to the production of the poppy, not 
strips of it, but in some districts all of it; the resulting penalty being 
dreadful famines. The cereals and the various necessities of life are 
neglected for the cultivation of this vengeance wreaking drug, and 
when distress of any serious nature possesses the opium raising dis- 
tricts, famine breaks out concurrent, and the people perish in thous- 
ands, yea millions. 

"If India had been the guilty instigator, and promoter of the ex- 
ecrable trade, starvation meted out to her masses might have been a 
merited retribution, but when she is innocent, the punishment is too 
unjust and dreadful to contemplate. 

"England, although she has not suffered directly for a sin she has 
nourished, has so conducted her own creation, that it has enwrapped 
the chains around her own form. She is now so deeply involved in 
debt, that she must needs continue in the wrong in a fruitless, yet 
desperate effort to reclaim herself. She dare not apply the effective 
remedy of entire, abrupt stoppage, by curbing her craving for treasure, 
that provoked the inception of the festering sore. 

"Hence, the era of the opium trade continues unimpaired, and in- 
stead of declining, bids fair to become a permanent evil, that doubt- 
lessly, will cast millions upon millions of humanity into an abyss 



92 CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 

of darkness, infamy and despair. As the situation is at the present 
day, it will require an universal reaction of reform to down this mon- 
ster, opium, and though this should eventually occur, I would fore- 
tell, not as an alarmist, that scores of years of preciousness must roll 
on, before the uprooting can be absolute. 

"Considering these odious deeds, the critical historian must decide 
that England has not been a virgin of purity in all her dealings with 
India. 

"Forethought, genuine sympathy, and concerted movement with 
the pure native ideas on the part of the government, can alone coun- 
teract, with expedite certainty, the feeling of mutual foreign ani- 
mosity nurtured among the people of India. 

"Diplomacy in its channels is right, but genuineness in accelera- 
tion, and propitiation of actions, and plans, is the quality that grasps 
the sceptre of command, that is presented with unanimous approba- 
tion. Notwithstanding, if a government cannot act with genuineness 
of sympathetic aid, let them do so diplomatically, if they wish to ac- 
quire the moral as well as demonstrative support of their subjects. 

"Real diplomacy, in India, calls for many reforms, and time will 
only serve to more fully illustrate the want of them. 

"There is not a virtue, industry or institution of any kind in India 
that has not been affected in some way by her overriders, and in most 
phases for the worse. It has been a case of a country, with com- 
paratively few faults, having evils thrust upon her, and her original 
weaknesses magnified a thousandfold. But I am speaking of the past 
in relation with the present; India now has a present for the future, 
and she will gradually atone. 

"When I came to this country, I was astounded by the false ideas 
prevalent about the land of my birth. Numerous books, pamphlets, 
magazine articles, et cetera, that I have read on her condition, cus- 
toms, religion, and other subjects relating to her, have caused me 
mingled indignation and amusement. Indignation, because she has 
been falsely, no matter if unwittingly or not, maligned, and abused; 
amusement, because of the silly and, in a broad sense, asinine palaver 
and depictions? of the writers. These scribes may, no doubt do, 
possess a certain amount of intelligence and education as their mortal 
apportionments, but they have procured their information from very 
unreliable sources, and, with extremely few exceptions, have taken a 
very narrow-minded view of affairs. I do not say facts, because 
they very rarely understand or state them, and when they do, gen- 
erally distort them to suit and fit their works, and essays, which, as 
a rule, are of a very sensational order, intended for the sensation- 
reading public, and not for the cultured minority of your people. 



CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 93 

"These abjurers of truth, and flippant traducers have spread incal- 
culable untruths, and misconceptions abroad. The Hindoos are now 
looked upon by the immense majority of the intelligent, well-read, 
but ill-informed inhabitants of alien lands, as heathens or savages, 
or both, but, thanks to the All-Creative Power, or Creator, that you 
call God, and I Brahma, we are not pagans, uncivilized brutes, as we 
have been misnomered, and described by these travelers, and others. 
True, our life, our industries may be antiquated, and primitive, but 
our religion, and our morals are pure-pure." 



^ 



CHAT IL 

COMPARISON OF THE ART OF INDIA AND THAT OF THE 
OUTER CIVILIZED WORLD. 

"With you as a manufacturing country, a progressive country, 
we cannot, unfortunately, be compared. But, in spite of our grievous 
deficiencies in the modern substantial industries of our forward con- 
temporaries, in the arts, we, in many equal, and in the science of 
philosophy, we excel you. 

"You, speaking of you all as one, are possessed of the substantial 
fruits of industrial art, while we have always ranked first in the ideal 
art, and, I presume to say, will continue to. I must confess that tlie 
advantages of excellence in the industrials are manifold, and it is only 
too evident, that in the upraising of the multitude it excels the ideal 
in much, but our Creator did not intend that the beauties of the world 
should consist in substantiality alone. No, symmetry of outline should 
also be considered, and only the combination of the two can be made 
perfection. 

"True, a few of the ancient countries have competed with us, 
but they have degenerated, and some of them hopelessly so; while 
I contend, and every extensive traveler of India will support me, that 
India still has the material to predominate in, and perpetuate her sub- 
lime ideal art. She has manifested to the world the excellence of 
her artists by her exhibit in the building allotted her at the Columbian 
Exposition, though I must criticise the exhibit censoriously, and state 
that it was not nearly so good as it could and ought to have been. 
Yet, this feeble display of her ability made many realize her worth 
in her delicate workmanship. 

"Our ideal art, which has been dealt blow after blow by ignorant, 
unappreciative foreign conquerors, is slowly progressing, and, in time, 
we will come back to our standard, and shall, I hope, endeavor to 
blend substantiality with the ideal. 

"When I say substantiality, I do not mean exactly strength of text- 
ure; many of our beautiful structures, such as the Tomb of Noor 
Mahal, the Pearl Mosque, and others too numerous to mention, 
are still standing, monuments to the genius of the artist and artisan 
sons of dear old India. I mean the usefulness, practicability of every- 

94 



CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 95 

thing appertaining to life's worli, everything concerned in the general 
welfare of a people. Too much ideality extends to frailness— too 
much substantiality to the other extreme, coarseness. 

"I do not think, that I indirectly or pointedly accuse you of being 
lost to the beauties of the world, but I do state, as a fact, implanted 
in the minds of many of your own, that you, in your struggle for ele- 
vation, have lost much that is beautiful, and that you possessed when 
not so highly cultivated (?). Your own pre-eminent poets, and artists 
have mourned the lack of poetic, and artistic feeling in you as a race, 
and now, at the close of the nineteenth century, you are beginning to 
feel and realize the truth of their lament, and are, I am happy to ob- 
serve, striving to culture all the beauties of Nature, which form the 
component parts of real art, ideal and substantial. 



^ 



CHAT in. 

"The mass of the people, of the outside world, already believe India 
a beautiful couutry, possessed of many artistic treasures in exquisite 
buildings, and the lilie, and that she has able artisans still, but they 
cannot imagine that she has a pure, mind-elevating religion, or that 
she possesses any inherent education, which she does in the upper 
castes; neither can they class her in any other respect with the ad- 
vanced countries of the exterior universe; they simply look upon 
her as a wild, well night exhausted region of the earth. In this last 
supposition they are not long from right, so far as monetary exhaus- 
tion is concerned, but she is, on the whole, heights above wildnoss, 
and has the nucleus of far-reaching wealth in her breast. Though her 
glowing riches (the least valuable of all) have been spirited away 
by her invading robbers, her best remains for future toilers, though 
not for robbers. The history of the world has repeatedly demonstrated 
that there is a resurrection or evolution of conditions, and I cannot 
see why India should not have her resurrection as time glides on. 

"Poor India must be aroused from her dormant state, and then 
her greatness will be of now, not of the departed ages. Do not think 
that I speak this in enthusiasm only, or because her long gone, proud 
and noble past wakens me to her possible future, which might be very 
vague had she not the material to work with. No, It is her rising con- 
dition that encourages, nay, that forcibly impels me to make this fore- 
cast assertion. The revolution of feeling has commenced, and, in a 
comparatively short time, its effect in India will be felt throughout the 
universe, and, instead of possessing several hundreds of millions of 
ambitionless human beings in the Empire, the world will have an 
animated land, straining every nerve to improve herself, and sisters. 
Once thoroughly aroused from her condition of suspended animation, 
this will surely be the result, as sure as there is a sky above us. 

''I have spoken of the material India has, that will yet elevate her. 
It is quite natural that you should desire to know clearly, and concise- 
ly, what this material is. Well, she has a very productive, fertile soil, 
bouud to yield lucratively both in abundance and quality. But most 
important of all, she has a number of progressive, educated sons, 
who desire to see the work of elevation go onward, and forward. They 
are the ones that exemplify what her people might be with every 



CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 97 

facility for education. I am proud to say, that these Brahmins are 
the equals of the enlightened people of the outer world. 

"This may seem ridiculous to those who have never been in the 
land, or who have read the accounts of unreliable writers, but it is not 
so. Every Brahmin of standing, even if he does not have the polish 
of an European course of education, writes and converses in from three 
to nine or more languages, and understands our sacred writing San- 
skrit, the father of all tongues, thoroughly. The last is an all-import- 
ant part of a Brahmin's education, for the Vedas, and other theological 
books are in Sanskrit, and as they set forth the Brahmin doctrines, 
and laws, and as the Brahmin is of the sacerdotal caste, the highest 
caste, he must be learned in all the precepts his religion expounds. 

"This is not bigotry, because in learning the precepts of Manus, 
the law-giver of Brahmanism, and studying other religious works, 
the student has to acquaint himself with many sciences, especially 
philosophy. This brings in one of the most rare sciences, which you, 
as a people, are deficient in. 

"Philosophy is the foundation of Brahminism; our arguments are 
from the standpoint of the philosopher and humanitarian, consequent- 
ly, all Brahmins are, to a more or less extent, philosophers. The Hin- 
doo race has been and really is, too philosophic for its own good, for 
this same Innate doctrine forces it to bear burdens none but a philo- 
sophic people would endure. 

"At present, India needs time before she can rise from the chaos, 
that has enveloped her in some guise, continually, for the spirit of 
progression in numbers of her children must shape a destiny far above 
her condition at this hour. The sample of the progressive spirit of 
the Hindoos is shown in their vigor in erecting edifices of learning, 
in simulation of the peoples of the West. We have colleges, and 
schools of the highest order, encompassing the highest branches of 
learning, established in the large cities, and common schools are scat- 
tered over the land. The higher institutions only take in a small radius 
to-day, but they are bound to extend. 

"The Indian potentates, and the Hindoos, of large and small means, 
have assisted to the best of their ability the furtherance of the grand 
enterprise of extended education. The Hindoo colleges and schools are 
conducted on the most approved continental system, by most able na- 
tive faculties, who carry the rising generation on to the acme of learn- 
ing. The fees for the courses, in comparison with those demanded 
by the government and missionary colleges, are much less, being within 
the reach of those of slim incomes, while students highly versed in the 
elementary branches are proffered free scolarships, as a suitable re- 
ward for merit, 



98 CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 

''The minds of the students of these homes of learning, are not 
only enriched by digging in abstruse sciences under erudite professors, 
but their eyes are widely opened to the retrogradation of their land, 
and they imbibe through the printed page, the liberal ideas of the 
nations afar. 

"In supporting the negative side of the question, whether India 
is backward in every point, I have had the honor and opportunity to 
raise my voice in her defense. I only hope I have rendered her cause 
some aid, and I feel that I have. I know her faults from practical, 
actual contact with her people, but I know her virtues just as well. 
I have shut my eyes to neither one nor the other, and have always 
endeavored to assist in rectifying the first, and sustaining, defending 
and improving the latter. The mind of this age is, I reiterate, satiated 
with groundlessly base and shallow stories of India, that have not a 
semblance of truth in them. They have been put afloat by bombastic 
scribblers, mistermed 'Eastern Savants,' who either have the presump- 
tion to criticise a land and people they are unacquainted with, or hash 
up their masses of vituperations, and aspersions, because it is to their 
interest to do so. If India is to be viewed from an invulnerably skep- 
tical standpoint, with a meager sprinkling of unprejudiced critics, it 
makes it a sheer necessity that she find her main defenders among her 
own. 

"That India has her lackings, and her degenerations, I would not 
foolhardily deny, but her atrocious decry ers skip over her vast good, 
and enlarge upon the bad, that is mostly the product of alien force, 
U-ickery, and tampering. Those blessings she has are microscoped 
instead of being extolled, and the backsliding and unrighteousness is 
seldom fairly dwelt upon in cause or remedy. 

"Without a verbose discourse on the matter of remedy (I have 
spoken at length of the cause), I would say that, to put on foot, and at- 
tempt to sustain a full-fledged radical reform movement would be 
to deal your object a death blow, and its originators and sustainors 
could not hope to start another, no matter how ameliorated or lessened 
in radicalism, with any show of triumphant success. They would be 
iri-etrievnbly tabooed by the orthodox forces. The sensible Brahmins, 
ardent in their desire for social improvements and religious revisiou^4, 
have realized this, and have judiciously and rationally withheld their 
unbounding zeal, though Avorking quietly and effectually for the high- 
est inculcations, thus founding a right to be recognized as possessors 
of your Job's great attribute— patience, 



CHAT IV. 

"Your Biblical advocates, in India, have not masticated the sub- 
ject, have rushed headlong into an abortive crusade against all the 
teachings and practices of the Hindoos, overlooking the predominating 
beauties it holds, and have thus demolished whatever chance they 
might have of small success, and causing all elements to reciprocate the 
bitter feeling in speech, and writing, they have improvised as their 
almighty weapon of persuasive warfare. 

"The Brahmins were at first attracted to your religious belief to 
the degree of sounding, examining and respectfully discussing it, which 
is a great margin more than your religious advocates have done with 
ours. But when the Brahmins saw the thoughtless, hostile follies 
your advocates committed, they shrank back and as the obnoxious 
methods of traduction, on the part of these advocates continued and 
multiplied, the animostiy of the Hindoos was aroused in the most an- 
tagonistic form, as they rallied to the defense of the faith of their 
fathers. 

"The liberal-minded Brahmins have always thought the employ- 
ment of brainy argument, witty repartee if you will, correct, but for 
religious traduction, there has been but one word never! With the 
arguing pen and voice, the Brahmins would have stepped forth to wel- 
come the Biblical advocates, but their opponents, introducing slander, 
they have excluded them from their presence and attention as hon- 
orable disputants. 

"Although many of the Brahmins have picked up the retaliatory 
method of abuse, we of any broad-mindedness, have not descended to 
the degradation of defaming or attempting to belittle the Bible, which 
you hold to be divinely Inspired. To the contrary we, of discernment, 
admire its excellent doctrines and propounded wisdom, and consider 
you fortunate to have such a regulator of life; yet, with pardonable 
secular esteem, we are firmly and as unshakenly impressed with the 
greatness, wiseness and appropriateness of our beloved Vedas. 

"The Brahmins, of advanced thought, are convinced that the faults 
of the Hindoo race lie in its quixotic customs that have become con- 
founded and admixed with its religion, and have shaped themselves 
into religious superstition. With these thoughts uppermost in their 
minds, the erroneous principles must be abolished! The patient, quiet 
process of renovation is leagues ahead of noisy, clamorous scrambling 



100 CHATS WITH THE BRAHMIN. 

for newness, that mostly ends vaporally. Conditions and circum- 
stances must be accounted in all such efforts, to force modern ideas 
ahead, on one and all, is similar to forcing a child to too much study, 
cramming is the school parlance, I believe. The opposition to all ad- 
vanced ideas is very strong among the ignorant and bigoted classes 
(we have them the same as you, and a great many more in proportion). 
The persistent lilliputian progressionists will win, by showing the 
stolid opposition where they are in error, and the corrective for their 
mistakes. Thus we will pass out of the yoke, that has been reposing 
heavily on our uecks, led by the advancers with their reactionary 
principles. But time must elapse ere this. 

"I would say, in conclusion, that temperate conservatism is posi- 
tively progressive, much more so than unthinking rushes forward, 
but that hermitism is of an entirely opposite nature. We have the 
two spirits in India, and therein lays the problem of modernizing the 
land. The complete adjustment of India's curses and healing of her 
wounds, which are no longer gaping as they have been in various ages, 
is assigned to her not far distant generations, while the future mil- 
lions are yet unborn, the advanced Brahmins of the times, and their 
immediate progeny are, and will be laboring on the advanced highway, 
so as to bequeath their lineal descendants some fragments of the ad- 
vanced methods and truths, and at the same time be taming the oppo- 
sition of the internal dissenters into a demulcent spirit. 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS, 



101 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

These fragmentary writings, evidently the labor of his leisure from 
High School studies, are inserted to indicate the industry of the lad in 
his determined purpose of a future vocation, rather than for any liter- 
ary merit they possess. Still they add to the purpose of the publication 
as noting his perseverance and method. 

t)5*' ^^ t^^ 

LETTERS FROM A PRODIGAL ABROAD. 

A fellow gets enough advice to drive him "plum wild an' 'stracted" 
these days. Every old crank he meets has three or four great big "gobs" 
of advice to offer him, and usually they are left over stock nearly as 
useful as advice from me upon how to get rich would be. 

If you see a fellow who couldn't swim his own length, very busy 
talking on the beach, you make your mind up that he has a victim 
whom he is advising upon "that beautiful art, sir, swimming! A glori- 
ous recreation, sir." And as it goes, "I'll bet dollars to doughnuts," 
your dad has been instructed by half the amateurs and barnstormers 
he knows, in regards to the most effective manner of eating leeks 
(onions) and playing "the squire." Ask him. 

I didn't know you had a lawsuit on hand of late years. What 
was it? Tell me something of it next time. Glad the old man won 
it, though. Tell him to stay on Easy street this time, and rent out 
the old place on Hardtack alley. That is too close to Broke avenue 
to be really comfortable. Oh, lordy! I've been all along there. 

Did you ever sleep at Mrs. Greensward's Hotel? I have. You pull 
the sky over you for cover, and use the stars for a lamp; use the north 
and south poles for bed posts, and an early morning shower for an 
alarm clock. It is fun, but too much of it is tedious. 

* 4: * 

ONE OF LIFERS CHARACTERS. 

The other day I was going down Broad Street when I espied a 
gaunt, old man, who was quite over-bent with age. His narrow, 
bewrinkled face possessed but one prominent feature, a thin, elongated, 
crooked nose;— his small sunken, gray eyes could be dimly discerned 

103 



104 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

through the haze of his shaggy eyebrows, yet, both they and the 
yellow parchment skin seemed only a background to the nose. His 
hoary locks fell over his shoulders, being in strong contrast with his 
well-worn, black suit. As he limped along with the aid of his faith- 
ful, sturdy, hickory cane, one might imagine him a rare relic of the 
ante-deluvian period, preserved for our benefit. 



A SUDDEN SHOWER ON THE STREET, 

See, there runs a newsboy, drenched by the downpour, but loudly 
and persistently crying "Extra!" There is an unfortunate Italian, 
standing wearily by his fruit cart under a leaky shed, with his coat 
buttoned up and presenting a most miserable appearance in general. 
Hither and thither flit the pedestrians, sprinting for shelter. 
The carts rush madly along in desperate attempts to reach their 
destinations. Indeed the burst of rain has caused havoc throughout 
the thoroughfare. 



THAT PROSPECTIVE CITY COLLEGE, 

Across Broad Street from either the front of the Main Building, or 
the Annex, one may see a great structure which every student of 
the Central High School considers one of the Seven Wonders of the 
World. When this edifice will be completed, is the Chinese walled 
puzzle of the anxious Seniors, Juniors, Sophs and Fresh. Will it be 
finished in eighteen hundred and ninety six or a few centuries later, 
when our great-great-grandsons' great-great-grandsons are ready to 
enjoy its many comforts? 



GRAND OLD BROAD STREET. 

If the 'buses are forced off Broad Street and the trolley cars sub- 
stituted, I would consider it a most unfortunate exchange. The street 
is now— as its name implies— broad and also clear. With disfiguring 
trolley-tracks on its breast, it must be accordingly marred in beauty, 
filled with the whiz and rumble of trolley wires and wheels, as well 
as being additionally dangerous for the pedestrian. For the sake of 
the beautiful street and the great number of people who traverse it, 
I hope the old 'bus remains supreme! 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 105 

AN INVOLUNTARY CLIFF ROLL. 

Astoria, is a little city at the mouth of the historic Columbia River, 
which flows by the City of Portland (this is an error, Portland is situ- 
ated on the Williammette River, an afhuent of the Columbia), the main 
centre of Oregon, and one of the principal points on the Pacific Slope. 
Astoria, is the port of Portland, and consequently allied in fortune 
with the larger City. 

The small city— named after the renowned John Jacob Astor— is 
built mostly on piles, with numberless hills for a background. The 
climbing and descending of these hills is a favorite pastime of the 
young Astorians, and I often joined them in their rather exciting 
ascents and descents. The descent I have in mind was by far the most 
perilous of all my "hill adventures" and one of the most dangerous 
events of my brief existence of fifteen years. 

It may seem a Munchausen story of high degree to the reader, but 
I can well vouch for it, as can some of the inhabitants of the place. 

During a visit to Astoria, I had met a spiritualist— a lady who dealt 
with the departed. (?) As I was then but eleven years of age, such a 
personage filled me with deep awe. When one day my spiritualistic 
acquaintance asked me to accompany her on a visit to a friend, I was 
but too glad to acquiesce. We made our jaunt happily enough, but 
when we reached the friend's home, I was unceremoniously deserted 
by the "Doctor," the spiritualist, who tersely bid me good-bye, there- 
upon I marched for my hotel. 

The home of the spiritualist's friend was upon one of the hills 
previously mentioned, so, in order to get back where I lived, a descent 
was necessary. Instead of going down the path my companion and I 
had ascended, I started off on my own hook to discover a new way 
to descend- and, I did! Rambling on among the trees, I found a 
path at last and decided to follow it up. Starting up a race pace, I 
forged ahead sv\^ingingly until of a sudden I reached a clump of trees 
and high, thick grass, which seemed to form a natural termination of 
the route. Yet I foolishly pushed forward into the grass. Crack- 
went some underlying twigs. Crunch— went the soft sod under me 
and in a jiffy I plunged forward— falling or rather sliding down a 
steep decline, little less than perpendicular. Down I had gone like a 
shot, till my feet striking a tuft of grass, I was thrown on my side 
and began rolling. Fortunately I had made no effort to stay my 
lightning-like roll, because of extreme fright. They say people think 
a deal when in such a predicament, but all I thought, as I rolled, 
bumped and bounded on was simply "I'm a goner!" The last I re- 



106 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

member of this unlocked for and rapid descent was a bang against 
a knoll of earth, a bounce in the air, and then landing squarely on a 
spread of soft earth some feet below, which broke my fall and prob- 
ably saved me from either serious injury or death. 

People below who had seen me tumble, rushed forward and helped 
me up. I was carried into a house and manipulated. The breath had 
been metaphorically "knocked out of me." My eyes filled with dirt, 
and my body slightly bruised, but no bones were broken and strange 
to say my clothes not torn, due to the fact that they vv^ere of extra 
strong material (the uniform of the Cadets at the Bishop Scott 
Academy of Portland, Oregon.) 

The dirt was fished out of my eyes, I was given a dose of strong 
w^hiskey and ingloriously carted home in a carriage, by a gentleman. 
When I reached home my parents w^ere out, so I quickly got to bed, 
being soon after taken with a vomiting spell, in the midst of which, 
with two ladies by my bedside, mother and "Pop" arrived. I had 
gathered and eaten blackberries, and to allay the intense alarm of my 
mother at the apparent hemorrhage I forced myself to sputter forth 
"B-1-l-ck-berries." 

Next morning as I was all right, except for a little soreness, I ex- 
plained to my parents that I had fallen fifteen feet. Later in the day 
Mr. Olsen, as Auctioneer and a friend of "Pop's" met him and spoi^e 
of my terrible fall. Father said "Yes, a fall of fifteen feet is bad." 
"Fifteen feet!" thundered Mr. Olsen in exclamation. "Mr. Jack," 
said he, regaining his composure, "I want you to come along with me 
right now, and see where your son had his tumble." They reached 
the spot as I was showing the place to my mother. My parents were 
horrified at the sight. The path I had made from the high grass and 
tree was plainly visible down the almost vertical side of the hill. My 
clothes must have adhered to the clay soil, the clinging of which had 
stayed the velocity of my descent. They estimated that I slid between 
sixty and seventy feet when my feet striking a bunch of grass where 
the hill spread out about forty-five feet toward the road, with a fall 
of some dozen feet or more. The collision with the grass must have 
pitched me forward and on my side, and I continued rolling till I 
came to the edge, when I had a further fall of some eight feet, landing 
on an encrusted surface formed by the silt that years of rain and 
storm had washed to the bottom. My head, by a few inches escaped 
hitting an upright hitching post and I landed between the fore and 
hind wheels of an old cart that had stood there for several years 
after being discarded as useless. My body in rolling, after striking 
the tuft of grass, bad followed a course made by the rains and thus 



MISOBLLANBOUS WRITINGS. 107 

avoided a large rock that I might have hit, and, in landing, had I 
swerved a little either to the right or left, I would have struck the post 
or the wheels and death in unison. The entire fall and roll was about 
one hundred and twenty feet. The afternoon and next morning 
papers all had lengthy accounts of the fall of John Jack's son. 



THE REAL BRUISER. 

When I was in my twelfth year (I am fifteen now), I was a fervid 
follower of pugilism. Like many a boy who has read unrealistic but 
blood-curdling detective and other novels, I read everything in the 
papers concerning the fighters and the fights. I had even, to my 
mother's horror and my father's disgust, gathered together in a scrap 
book the pedigree of all the worthies of the ring, making annotations 
in pen and ink in ardent praise or censure of each knight of brawn and 
muscle. But the cure for my pugilistic mania was at hand and came 
in a mild way, though it left a forcible impression upon my brain. 
At the time which I write I resided in San Francisco, California. We 
lived on the European plan, and I ate my meals at Manning's Res- 
taurant, opposite Baldwin's Hotel. One evening, while seated at a 
table, stowing away everything that had been brought me for dinner, 
in came an immense, thick-set man, with a high hat, stand up collar, 
gaudy neck tie, large expanse of white shirt, with a large, coquettish 
diamond blinking under the brilliant lights of the place, stuck in it. 
His dress plainly showed his ilk— one of the "red hot sports." Walking 
behind this typical individual was a quiet, plainly and neatly dressed 
young fellow, who showed more of politeness than his companion, by 
reason of the circumstance that he had taken off his hat as soon as 
he had entered. The man with the "stove pipe" now took off that 
piece of headwear and put it on the rack, at the same time shaking his 
beringed hand to cause a full scintillation of the precious stones set 
in them. To cause more attention and add to his importance!?) he 
uttered an unnecessary and hoarse series of grunting coughs. His 
silent companion quietly put his hat on the rack and they sat down at 
my table. 

I had forgotten food by this time, eating mechanically and watch- 
ing these two individuals with interest. 

The owner of the "plug hat" now opened up a loud conversation 
with two sporty young fellows at an adjoining table, a boisterous 
chat on the merits of prominent race-horses, and the day's race was 
the theme, the quiet little man maintaining silence throughout. At 



108 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

last to my great delight, their cross-table conversatiou drifted to 
fistiana, and I was all attention as they discussed foremost pugilists 
of the (lay. The talk of the trio was full of slang, and seemed to annoy 
other patrons of the place, but they kept it up, although their voices 
dropped to a lower pitch as they proceeded. Local pugilism was next 
on the tapis, and as they reached the subject of a prospective contest 
between Tommy White and some negro boxer, I was "warmed up" 
so to speak. 

"Who do yer t'ink 's goin' ter win?" inquired the flashily dressed 
individual, in a tough voice. Before the inquirer could be answered 
by either of the other two speakers, 1 unconsciously said, "Tommy 
White, you bet." Immediately the attention of all was turned on me, 
and I felt quite abashed for so volunteering a reply to the principal 
spokesman, who now gazed at me with a surprised look. 

"Why do yer t'ink White's goin' ter win. Kid?" he quizzed with a 
searching look. " 'Cause I do," I answered, in a scared tone and with 
a frightened look, causing all to laugh, even the quiet young man who 
heretofore appeared listless. 

"Dat's no reason," laughingly and semi-scornfuUy vouchsafed the 
big be-jeweled sport. 

"Well, I'll tell you why I think Tommy must win," I spoke with 
a show of confidence now. "You know Tommy White lammed the 
stuflan' out of Billy Murphy, and though I backed Murphy, that made 
me a supporter of White then and there. I tell you, he can't lose, 
he's Champion in his class." That sport's face was a study of mingled 
surprise and incredulousness. 

As soon as the "big 'un" could catch his breath he started in: 
"Look-a-here, Kid, what do yer know about the pugs?" "Why, I've 
been a follower of the ring for a dog's age," I stoutly asserted. This 
knocked them off their pins of dignity, and they roared, as did the 
surrounding patrons. "Dat settles it," chokingly said my sport in- 
terrogator, in the midst of a spasm of laughter. There was a few 
seconds' pause, as the laughing and chuckling subsided, and then, as 
if a thought had crashed through his cranium, he bawled out as 
everyone pricked up their ears: "Say, kin Tommy White lick Dal 
Hawkins?" "Yes, you bet your gold watch and chain, he can smother 
him," I said emphatically, gazing at his monstrous dangling chain 
that shook on his rotund abdomen as he writhed in his chair in laugh- 
ter, chorused by the surrounders. 

"De Kid's dead game," he asserted to his sporting chums, and then, 
as if by sudden inspiration, he wheeled around, grabbed his quiet 
companion by the shoulders, and said in a sonorous voice: "This, 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 109 

Kid, is Mr. Tommy White." My arm shot out like a piston rod of an 
engine, and my little hand grabbed the palm of "Mr. White's." 

Note! about limited contests. "Want to see th' claret" 

and my soliloquy on brutality of fighting, and that the "sport" was 
the real bruiser. 

His story, lilie his young life, is broken off, but from his note it is 
evident that he intended to conclude it. From his account at the time 
I recall that "Tommy White" continued the talk with him, calling out 
his impressions of the "fighters" in general, his sporty friend becoming 
impatient, tried to hurry him off, but White said, "No, I want to talk to 
this young lad. I've heard all your 'smart Alecks,' who know all about 
it, but I tell you this Kid has a better knowledge of the merits of the 
boys than the whole lot of 'em put together." The community at this 
time was excited by the killing of a poor waiter in a scrap at one of 
the Athletic Clubs, so White asked the boy his opinion upon the 
effect it would have on boxing in general, who said he thought it 
would tend to stop brutality, but that the sport should be continued, 
the points in the match being regarded as the object to be aimed at, 
at which the sporty gent remarked: "Ah, I wouldn't give schucks for 
a fight if I couldn't see the claret." 



THE C. H. S. BLOWERS CLUB/ 

(By Arthur Firmin Jack.) 

I. "Ala Vacash." 

II. Serious Discussion of a Model Educational Course. 

III. The Safety of the Safety. 

IV. On the Heels of Momentous Questions. 
V. A Chat on the C. H. Srs' Sports. 

The Philosophical Member. 
The Blockhead Member. 
The Munchausen Member. 
The Cynical Member. 
The Aristocratic Member. 
The Poetical Member. 
The Linguistic Member. 
The Jovial Member. 

* Two chapters only are herewith reproduced.— Compiler. 



110 MISOBLLANBOUS WRITINGS. 

BRIEF PREFACE. 

We use no names, we leave the reader to recognize. 

I. 
"Ala Vacash." 

"Buttons! But-tut-tut-tut-tons, I sa-a-a-y!" roared the Verbose 
member, for that unfortunate delinquent personage, who was in some 
sxtreme of the building, the Verbose member, who had just quietly 
entered (with the aid of his precious latch key), and had so disturbed 
the peace, stopped for breath. Before he could repeat the heinous 
offense, he was faced by the qualiing black. "Here I is, sah," says 
"Buttons," with a scared grin. "What does yo' desire, sah?" 

"Take off my coat, sir, this instant," gruffly says the individual 
addressed. Buttons quietly relieves him of his hat and coat, brushes 
him off, and then stiffens up in an erect posture, like a statue. The 
Verbose member hands Buttons a quarter, which occasions a thankful 
roll of the said Buttons' eyes, as he silently and quickly pockets it. 
Then the irritated donor marches into the club room. 

As the newcomer enters, all the members in conclave abruptly 
break off conversation, stiffen into "military form" and quietly and 
solemnly recognize him. One might imagine from this grave saluta- 
tion that the individual was either of importance or that he was 
cordially disliked in the true sense of the phrase. The fact is, an 
intermingling of both feelings occasioned it. The Verbose member 
crosses over to two gentlemen, whose eyes light up as if they expected 
him to join them. 

"Well, well, how are you," asks one, extending his hand. "Splen- 
did! Never felt better in my life. How's yourself?" says the Verbose 
member, shaking hands. 

A brief introduction to the second party follows, and then an 
animated chat commences, which is concluded by the Verbose member 
looking at his watch and ejaculating: "Gentlemen, we are three 
minutes late by my trustworthy timepiece!" 

Hereupon all the gentlemen in the room fumble for their "trust- 
worthy timepieces," (ranging from Waterburys up), and give them a 
second of close scrutiny. 

"You are two minutes fast, sir, by your trustworthy timepiece," 
says the ironical voice of a tall, raw-boned individual. 

"One minute and a half," chips in a dwarfed personage, with 
excited emphasis. "One minute and a quarter!" "A minute!" and 
various other announcements of the correct (?) time came from the 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. HI 

various gentlemen assembled. "Sirs!" roars the Verbose member, in 
hot indignation, "I would have you understand that my watch is an 
old revered family heirloom, that has never been known to fail! Never! 
Never!" 

"Well, it is known to fail for once now," replied the Cynical mem- 
ber, who has caused this upheaval of indignation, by first declaring 
the watch fast. 

"My clock— I mean watch— sir, was set by the Independence Hall 
Clock an hour and a quarter ago, sir," vouchsafes the Verbose member. 

"I don't give a continental; your clock is absolutely wrong. My 
watch is not an old-fashioned, worn out family relic, but a capital 
Swiss one, sir," returns the Cynical member, with vigor. "Mine, sir," 
fires back the Verbose member, "is a good, practical, easy-going 
American made watch, sir; not a new-fangled foreign idea. A lottery! 
A quack product! A ' 

"Oh, we know your timepiece is a paragon, sir, do not extoll it, 
nor decry mine, I pray," breaks in the Cynical member, with irritating 
coldness. The Verbose member checks his reply and sets to work 
(with the aid of his two companions) to smooth out his ruflSed feathers, 
while the Cynical member starts up a quiet discussion of the merits 
of a good watch with his more congenial friends. All watches having 
been fumbled back into their respective pockets, everyone soon re- 
lapses into groups, chatting— suddenly, however, a member recollects 
that this is an improper procedure and emphatically inquires: "Gen- 
tlemen, we are now ten minutes behind time. Are we going to have 
our social meeting this evening, or not?" 

"Certainly! Oh, most assuredly," comes from all quarters of the 
room, as a refumbling for watches, to re-ascertain the mooted time, 
is made. But a general anxiety to "Come to order" deters all from 
discussing this subject, which everyone feels must cause another 
thunderclap, hurt more feelings, and cause more hearty ill-will, yet, 
everyone has his private opinion, which is muttered in solo, for per- 
sonal satisfaction. 

"Gentlem.en, let us pull up our chairs to form a circle and con- 
verse," proposed the Aristocratic member, suiting the action to the 
word by drawing out his chair. 

"Yes," agreed the Philosophic member with the rest, "I don't 
believe in spiritualism, or any ism for that matter, but there is nothing 
so convivial as a spiritually happy-go-lucky circle." 

A general approval of "that's so," and so forth, is elicited by this 
as each member assists in quickly forming a broken circle. 

"Now this is not a geometrically correct circle, gentlemen; the 



112 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

circumference is away out, but we are all together, and I suppose 
have a loquacious quantity of eloquence ready to tap for general 
discussion and debate," rightly surmises the Jovial member. 

"Exactly so," says everyone, and the Jovial member is happy. 
Well, gentlemen, this is the first meeting of the season. How have 
the members made out during their extended vacation?" inquires the 
Philosophical member. There is a chorus of mingled emphatic replies 
of "Immensely," "Excellently," "Tremendously!" But, the deep voice 
of the Aristocratic member rises above the rest and gains the as- 
cendency. 

"Ah, I spent all my time abroad this year, my dear fellows. Beau- 
tiful country— beautiful country. Unless you've been abroad you don't 
know what it's like, don't you know." 

"I suppose so," remarks the Cynical member. "You imbibe so 
much there." 

"Yes, indeed," reiterates the Aristocratic member. "Where can 
you find such a country as England, except in England itself? Whj^ 
when I speak of abroad, I always mean England. I never think of the 
excitable Frenchman, slow breathing Dutchman, or any of the rest, 
don't you know. I tell you there is no other place like it for eclat of 
character!" 

"Well, no-ow" drawls the Blockhead member. "I only went to 
England once, but I think that our State of Jersey is a more pleasur- 
able section of the world to visit any time of the year." 

"Yes, but remember you have only been to England once, old chap, 
and I'll wager it was a short trip." 

"I trotted out to the Pacific Coast," affirmed the Verbose member, 
bursting in upon the Aristocratic member, and silencing him. "Found 
the country sadly depleted of both Cow-boys and gold, especially gold. 
But the far West is there and prospering like it rains in Oregon, by 
inches." 

"Now, I went on a jaunt down South," puts in the jovial member, 
cutting out his predecessor, who pauses for breath. "That is, I should 
say, through Florida. Found plenty of Colonels, whiskey, and darkies, 
and a fair supply of beautiful scenery. Florida is the State to go to 
for health, especially if you've got a blood disease, for there's so 
many 'skeeters that you're soon bloodless. It beats Jersey all hollow, 
and who won't vouch for Jersey? The invalids seem to appreciate 
this and flock there. Why, I considered myself a perfect Sandow 
all through the Summer. In many instances I was the only guest in 
the Hotel who could talk, walk, eat and sleep without assistance!" 

"Well, I went up into New England," says the Munchausen mem- 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 113 

ber. "An excellent section. In Boston, what one man don't know 
the next man does, and more, too. I wore three pairs of gold rimmed 
spectacles during my stay in the city. My optician bills ranged up in 
the hundreds, and I went through three libraries daily to let 'em 
see that one doesn't have to be a Bostonian to be a student." 

There was a solemn pause, an unanimous sigh of doubt and 
then the poetic member rushed to the rescue. 

"I went up to the Catskills, struck sublime scenery, the kind that 
lifts one to a planet of contentment, but my boarding house proved 
so bad on the score of bodily sustenance and rest, that, though my 
soul was enraptured, my poor stomach was placed in a state of 
chronic indigestion. For the preservation of my physique and mind, 
I was forced to forsake the heavenly surroundings and make a speedy 
return trip home to place myself under the care of our family physi- 
cian." 

"Too— too— too bad," tentatively sympathized the Linguistic mem- 
ber. "I went to Paris, and had a jolly time, that is— that is— I had 
a bon voyage and a happy time studying old French under some able 
native masters." 

"Studying old French, under old Frenchmen, eh?" abruptly says the 
cynical member, much to the linguistic member's annoyance. "Old 
French! The idea of studying such mummified nonsense! The fact 
that some language-munching old fossils have succeeded in raking 
up and perpetuating worn out, exhausted Greek and Latin, and have 
put them on your shoulders should, I think, satisfy you without in- 
stilling a burning desire in your noddle to plunge into dead and gone 
French." 

"Sir," says the Linguistic member with supreme contempt, "you 
are not a scholar. For the sake of your reputation you had better 
hold your peace." 

"Well," icily replies the cynical member, "I only gave you a piece 
of my mind." 

The linguistic member muttered "the ignoramus," but the philo- 
sophical member lulled this dangerous side-tracked debate by quickly 
breaking in: "Nearly all of you have been somewhere or another, I 
suppose, but I have continued a resident of this city of Brotherly 
Love, and though I broiled and frizzled to perfection under the rays 
of old Sol, I'm satisfied I've had a vacation. 



114 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

II. 

Serious Discussion of a Model Educational Course.* 

"Gentlemen," starts up the aristocratic member, "vacation is 
over,' lias been handled as a topic of the evening, so, for a change, 
I'd like to ask the assemblage their views on an exemplary educational 
course, one that any college or student might be proud to boast of." 

This sudden change caused a perceptible flutter, but the eloquence 
of the member had been tapped, and was now commencing to flow 
in a flooding stream, that drowned all opposition. 

"Well, sirs," said the linguistic member, setting the ball a-rolling, 
"I consider that the first thing to be treated— if we were writing a 
book, or essay, on the subject— would be the etymology of the word 
education. Education, sirs, is derived from the word educatio; the 
French education; the Italian educazione; and the Spanish, educa- 
cion; it is a common noun (who can doubt it), and applied to the com- 
mon and higher culture of the common and higher people." 

A quiet "Whew!" burst from the lips of nearly all, as this dignified 
definition is brought to an end with the utmost pomposity. 

"That is all right," runs in the cynical member, but as we are not 
writing a book or an essay on the subject, and not on a philological 
point at all, I think we can well dispense with all your bulky, use- 
less gibberish on the derivation of a word that only concerns us in 
effect, and not meaning. Who cares for education? I— I mean the 
etymology of the word— I don't. No one but an inquiring bookworm 
does, and the practical business man is so glad that he has got, and 
is using his education that he hasn't either the time or desire to go 
dictionary hunting." 

"That's so," springs in the blockhead, "I always liked quail or 
grouse hunting much better than dictionary hunting." 

The linguistic member mumbled "a pair of fools," bit his lip, and 
kept silent. 

"Well, I've got some views on education— not stereopticon views, 
either," commenced the jovial member. "I believe everyone ought to 
be educated, perfectly educated, that is, one ought to have so much 
education, and no more or less." 

"Ah, but you are forgetting the important physiological fact, that 
no man is equal to another mentally or physically." 

"This is established by the medical fraternity," interrupted the 
philosophical member. "You know the old trite aphorism— 'one man's 
meat is another man's poison.' " 

*AuTHOR'S Note.— May change this to "A Serious Discussion of Education". 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 115 

"Well, I may be forgetting the physiological fact, but I have stated 
what I would like to see true," continued the jovial member. "I must 
confess, however, that your poisoned meat adage comes in oppor- 
tunely. But you must remember that orators as well as lawyers 
can stretch points." 

"Stretch is a very appropriate word," remarlis the aristocratic 
member, rubbing his hands. "If you had used a lighter calibered 
word, you would have failed to have expressed the thought— if you 
had used a harsher one, you would have been an offender against the 
laws of society. Your use of this word stretch, I consider a part of 
education, and higher education, too. You have simply placed the 
identically necessary part of speech in the identically necessary place." 

Seeing that the Aristocratic member had finished with his bag- 
pipe, the Cynical member dropped into the discussion again. "Yes, 
you identified yourself with the word stretch, but English is not the 
only study to be upheld. Every study is important, and the one you 
can master the least is the most important. You are at the Alumni, 
but when you trot out on the Globe, the one you can best use and have 
most command over, is the one you want. I say study what is needed, 
what you can, and what you will. I can't guarantee that you are 
educated even then, but you've studied, and that is a satisfaction in 
itself. It's the study's fault if in such a case you cannot comprehend 
it," and the Cynical member, stopped with an emphasis, showing 
too plainly that he considered all that could be aptly said upon the 
subject had been said. 

But the discussion was not to be dropped, for now the Verbose 
member opens up with his batteries. "Sirs, this subject is not to 
be passed over so lightly. We have comparatively little time to de- 
vote to the question, but let us devote what time we have. Sirs, this 
is a grand, superb, magnificent matter to pass judgment upon. What 
is education? My— dear— sirs, it is— the— indoctrination— of— the— the— 
the angelic thoughts of the theologian, the practicability of the— the— 
the instruction, and the general— mark me— general breeding of a gen- 
tleman, in toto. I could say more, but this must suffice. I admonish 
you to wrestle with your Greek, Latin, Physics, Ethics and all; over- 
throw them, conquer them." The Verbose member put a lid over his 
vocal chords, to the immense satisfaction of every member. Every- 
one began to breathe freely once more, but none seemed willing (let 
alone anxious) to continue in the trend, and the Blockhead member 
mumbled something about being a "poor wrestler," and that was 
the finis. i , 



116 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 

CORRESPONDENCES 

Editor of the Mirror : 

Dear Sir:— Thanking you most heartily for the publication of my 
first contribution to the "Mirror's" columns, I enclose a second— and 
I trust not the last— set of puzzles for the current month, which I 
hope you will find worthy of space. As they are personal, I hope you 
will exercise your discretion before allowing them to appear in print. 
That is, you may find they contain certain petty witticisms, but do 
not allow that fact to prevent your eliminating, or absolutely striking 
out, any, or all of them, if you consider that they may injure in some 
respect the personal feelings of the esteemed gentlemen referred to. 

By their non-appearance in your paper, I shall know that I have 
acted too bluntly and that you have simply brought down the axe 
of censorship. 

If this prove to be the case, I will be more cautious, and try to 
summon more discretion to my aid the next time I communicate with 
you. Respectfully yours, 

ART. .JACK. 

«^ ^ t^ 

Why is Dr. Lightfoot's name in antithesis to his tread? 

Who is the Professor that is getting off so many "Brandt" new 
sayings? 

Why is Fessa (whom the Fresh think a great deal of) called a 
"riptail Rorer?" 

Why does the President of the "Annexed Fresh" give his men 
(they are nominally such) so much work "Bartine" sessions? 

What is the connection between the "Miller of the Dee" (Prof. 
Mensa) and a "lively cricket?" 

Supposing that all of the faculty are good church-goers, who is 
the most "Christine" member on the point of class strictness? 

Why does Playwright, Bookwright, Albright Professor Lacy, per- 
sist so "earnestly" in lacing up the La (z or c) boys? 

Does a certain much-liked professor of this institution know that 
a certain student was nearly "hided" by us for impudently affirming 
that he (the said student) had never heard a "Snyder lecture" than the 
one delivered on a certain Thursday? 



MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 117 

The following simple scraps of poetry were found among his ef- 
fects, and as they express the tendency of his thoughts, are included in 
this memorial. 

THE DIVINE POET. 
(From the Boston Pilot.) 

Whatever lacks purpose is evil, a pool without pebbles breeds slime; 
Not any one step hath chance fashioned on the infinite stairway of 

time; 
Nor ever came good without labor, in toil, or in science, or art; 
It must be wrought out through the muscles, born out of the soul and 

the heart. 

Why plough in the stubble with ploughshares, why winnow the chaff 

from the grain? 
Ah, since all of His gifts must be toiled for, since truth is not born 

without pain! 
He giveth not to the unworthy, the weak or the foolish in deeds; 
Who giveth but chaff at the seed-time shall reap but a harvest of 

weeds. 

As the pyramid builded of vapor is blown by His whirlwinds to nought, 
So the song without truth is forgotten; His poem is man to man's 

thought. 
Whatever is strong with a purpose, in humbleness woven, soul-pure, 
Is known to the Master of Singers. He toucheth it, saying "Endure!" 

* * * 

HEAVEN BY LITTLE. 

Heaven is not reached by a single bound; 
But we build the ladder, by which we rise 
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies, 

And we mount to its summit round by round. 

I count these things to be grandly true! 

That a noble deed is a step towards God. 

Lifting the soul, from the common sod. 
To a purer air and a broader view. 

We rise by the things that are under our feet, 
By what we have mastered of greed and gain. 
By the pride deposed, and the passion slain, 

And the vanquished ill that we hourly meet. 

This poem he recited with good eft'ect before his Class ou the 

Wednesday preceding his death. 

* * * 

THE SCULPTOR BOY. 

Chisel in hand stood a Sculptor boy, 

With his marble block before him;— 
And his face lit up with a smile of joy 

As an Angel dream passed o'er him. 



118 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 



He carved that dream on the yielding stone 

With many a sharp incision; 
In Heaven's own light the sculptor shone, 

He had caught that Angel vision. 

Sculptors of life are we, as we stand, 

With our lives uncarved before us, 
Waiting the hour when, at God's Command, 

Our life dream passes o'er us. 
Let us carve it then on the yielding stone, 

With many a sharp incision;— 
Its Heavenly beauty shall be our own— 

Our lives, that Angel's vision. 



On the day before, he was at his cousins' and for them recited 
the verses. After he had finished, the cousin asked him, "If, when 
he had finished his schooling he intended to follow his father's pro- 
fession" (an actor). Without discussing the matter, he replied, "I 
don't know, but I have only one aim in life now, and I shall have it 
till I accomplish it, and that is, to provide a plain little home for my 
Mama and Papa." And it was this laudable ambition, this prompting 
of a filial love, that urged on his efforts to fit himself for work that 
might provide an income. And to do this, he knew that labor was 
necessary, also, that as intelligence was the most effective, his work 
and his energy was such that he would seek and "find where truth 
be hid, though it were hid indeed within the center." It was this 
impulse to verify a silly tale that led him to his desperate end. 

♦ * * 

A FRAGMENT. 

One evening, filled with heavy care, 
Reclining deeply in the Ancestral chair, 
That'd fought so sturdily the grim foe, wear, 
My thoughts redrifted to days past by, 
And a vision came unto my drooping eye 
That caused me a regretful, painful sigh. 

'Twas not a spectre of voluptuous delight. 
Nor a revolting, vile phantom of the night. 
But a face evBr dear to my young sight. 



Memorial Services 



IN 



PHILADELPHIA AND PORTLAND, 
OREGON, 



TOGETHER WITH 



NEWSPAPER TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF 



Arthur Firmin Jack 



Also the Story of the Accident and Extracts 

FROM letters Written Shortly 

Before His Death. 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 131 

Mr. and Mrs. Jolin Jack regret that there is an absence from this, 
their memorial tribute to tlieir beloved sou, a full transcript of the 
entire proceedings of the memorial services iu homage to his memory, 
held at the Walnut Street Theater, in Philadelphia, by the kindness 
of Mr. Frank Howe, manager, on Sunday afternoon, 2.30 p. m., March 
29th, 1896. The following day, March 30th, would have been the 
sixteenth anniversary of his birth. Eev. C. Lockwood Fulforth, of the 
Messiah Church, East Huntington and Thompson streets, opened the 
exercises in prayer, followed by Dumont's Minstrels, from the Eleventh 
Street Opera House. A double quartette, or, more properly speaking, 
a septette— seven voices (names chronicled elsewhere), who rendered 
"Nearer My God to Thee" and "Rock of Ages" in impressive and truly 
sublime harmony. 

Prof. Charles A. Herrick, of the faculty of the Central High School 
staff, expressed in choice terms the characteristics of the youth, and 
the respect he was held iu by all the members of the faculty with 
whom he had come in contact, having won their esteem by his manly 
qualities, happy, joyous nature, and devotion to his studies. His 
popularity with the students with whom he associated was very 
pronounced, and had become deep rooted in the brief time he had 
been among them, and they all deplored his loss. 

Mrs. K. G. Bressnau's soprano solo, "Holy City," was exquisitely 
rendered, also "The Palms." Dr. Andrew Macfarlane, Principal of the 
Northeast Grammar School, who held to his young life the position of 
friend, as well as teacher, and who assisted him iu his studies even 
out of school hours, and who was with him the night before his death, 
paid him, in his address, a pathetic tribute, recouuting personal recol- 
lections from their very first meeting. 

The father, Mr. John Jack, read extracts from his works, and 
spoke feelingly of the disaster, and condemned in fitting terms the 
heartlessness displayed by the custodian of the Betz building, in their 
charges of personal responsibility on the part of his son for the 
calamity. Arthur Henry and Dr. Fulton's addresses follow. 

1744 Passyuuk Avenue, Philadelphia, April 7th, 1896. 

Dear Captain Jack:— 

In compliance with your request, I herewith send you a copy of the 
address which I made on the occasion of the memorial services, in 
homage to the memory of your loving and beloved son, and my dear 
friend, Arthur Firmin Jack. 

Allow me again to say that every word therein is most sincere, 
and my true conviction. 

By a singular coincidence, there were three of us, each of whose 



132 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

first names was Arthur: Arthur Jack, Arthur James, and myself. 
We three were elected officers of our class; and again, singularly 
enough, we three of the whole class, were very much of one mind, in 
reference to object in life, aspirations, and ambitions. We held to a sort 
of compact, to insure diligence and good discipline in our class at 
school; to discountenance and prevent, as far as possible, any "fresh- 
ness," or "Jack Harkaway-isms." Thus it was that we consulted 
together, and that I had the opportunity of learning and appreciating 
his merit. 

I would now beg you to comply with a request I make; that, if you 
can, you will kindly send me a photograph of him whom we all loved. 

With kind regards to Mrs. Jack and yourself, I am, sincerely yours, 

ARTHUR HENRY. 

ARTHUR HENRY'S ADDRESS. 

Dear Friends and Classmates:— 

As President of the class, of which he was a member and oflficer, 
at the Central High School, and because of the strong personal regard 
that had grown between us, I have been accorded the honor of address- 
ing you on this sad occasion. 

To-day would have completed, had not the inscrutable will of God 
otherwise ordained, the sixteenth year of the existence of one whom 
we all had learned to love, and in whose memory we are here assem- 
bled to-day, to speak in fondness of his many good qualities— qualities 
that, in a combined state and to such a degree, rarely exhibit them- 
selves in one of his years. 

Many of us, like myself, knew him but a short while, yet during 
that time our duties as class-officers brought us together frequently, 
and gave opportunities for observing and learning those good qualities 
of heart and mind which so endeared him to us. His courtesy and 
kindliness, his noble aspirations, his high ideals, his integrity, in 
declaring the right, and perseverance in doing it. 

Whilst he was but a child in years, he was a sage in wisdom. 

One would be surprised at the height, the breadth, the depth of 
his perceptions. He felt and knew there must be much far down 
below the surface, beyond the horizon, above the zenith, and he 
hungered to know what it was. He was never frivolous; always 
serious. As serious in play as in work; gleeful in his play; earnest and 
diligent in his work. 

To him "time" was not "money," but the opportunity of fitting 
himself for a nobler purpose. Life, to him, was a mission, a duty to 
be performed— a beacon light to humanity. 

Merlin (in Tennyson's Vivien) says: "Use gave me fame, and 
fame increasing, gave me further use." Thus was it with Arthur 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 12JJ 

Jack. This was the road which he mapped out to fame; and this his 
value of fame; that it make him further useful. 

This occasion recalls to my mind lines "In Memoriam," which was 
written for a similar occasion, some seventeen years ago. The author, 
John Arthur Henry (now dead), was a student at the University of 
Pennsylvania. A classmate who, like our dear departed friend, was 
beloved by all who knew him; had just died after a very short illness 
during his summer vacation. The lines are so beautiful and so fitting 
to the present, that I fain would repeat them: 

"From the far East he traveled his short day, 

Rejoicing toward the sunset bound of life; 
But darkness gathered round him on his way, 

And by the roadside, hidden from the strife 
And struggle of the onward pressing mass, 

He slept the sleep of everlasting rest. 
We in his path a loving spot shall pass. 

Where lies in death our latest and our best. 
Yet shall we grieve for him the surge 

And struggle of the onward pressing years, 
Shall memory refuse a fitting dirge, 

Or truer tribute to its silent tears? 
Yet selfish is the grief that mourns the dead. 

Lost to the world, but gathered to his God, 
His mounting spirit to its home hath fled; 

And all his grossness mingled with the sod." 

I have called this a sad occasion. It should, instead, be one of true 
joy; for, while we may sympathize with one another over our loss, let us 
remember that our loss is his gain; that while the beam of his smile 
no longer shines on us, he to his "home hath fled," and "selfish is the 
grief that mourns the dead." 

Let us, then, in homage to that spirit, resolve to cherish and keep 
green his spot in the garden of our memory. 

« * « 

Dr. Fulton, President Emeritus of the Cooper Literary Institute, 
delivered a brief address at the memorial service of Arthur Firmin 
Jack, the brilliant young man whose promising career was ended so 
suddenly by his falling from the Betz Building. We have secured a 
copy of the address, and print it on another page. Our readers will 
agree with us that this is a master-piece in the line of literature, and 
adds another laurel to the many that adorn the Doctor's brow.— Phila- 
delphia newspaper. 



134 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

DR, FULTON'S SPEECH. 
Memorial Services of the Late Arthur Firmin Jack. 
Friends and Schoolmates Gather to Pay Him Tribute — Dr. T. 
Chalmers Fulton's Touching Speech — The Well Known 
Orator's Eulogistic Remarks. 

It will be remembered this boy fell from the twelfth story of the 
Betz Building while taking a bird's-eye view of Philadelphia for the 
purjiose of writing a school essay on the subject, "Tall Buildings," to 
be read at the Central High School, of which he was a student. He 
was the son of the distinguished actor, Captain John Jack, now 
leading man in Joseph Jefferson's company. His mother has been 
known on the stage as "Annie Firmin." 

The following speech, a correct shorthand report, is published as 
a specimen of pure Addisonian English. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: It becomes my melancholy duty to speak 
a word and take a brief retrospect of one cut off by the unsparing 
hand of fate in the bloom of youth. A bright lad whom it was my 
pleasure to know as a frequent visitor to the Cooper Literary Institute, 
of Philadelphia, of which his distinguished father is a member. A 
boy of magnificent physique, beauty of form and feature, polished 
and manly manners of address and grace of carriage, precocious far 
beyond his years, and promising to a degree that words would fail 
me to depict. In a few minutes' conversation with the youth, anyone 
of breeding, education or judgment would recognize a mind that it is 
not extravagance to denominate a prodigy of intellect. Alas, what a 
light has been extinguished! 

Th*: subjects which this beautiful mind considered were not the 
trifles of fiction or the gewgaws of boyish sport— the ball field, the 
boat race, or the fancies of pleasure. On the contrary, they dealt 
with questions deeply theological, moral, economic and mathematical. 
Indeed, some of the productions that this developing intellect evolved 
would do credit to authors of fame and years of practice in the art 
of journalism and research. 

How sad it is that this great prospect is veiled forever, and that 
the comforts his dear parents contemplated as the light of their de- 
clining years have been torn from them in the twinkling of an eye 
and sunk into oblivion to rest there like a dream of childhood: 

"Until the stone is rolled away and those that sleep shall rise again." 

Our sympathies for the father and mother we cannot convey in 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 125 

language, but we can say that it is a pride of honor to have been the 
parents of so noble a boy. God give them comfort! 

His ambition, I learn, was to rise in the world, and with the 
conjoint efforts of his parents, to create a home where they could 
cease their professional itineracy, and in the seer and yellow leaf have 
the pleasure of a settled domicile. Think of this laudable ambition! 
Could aught but a far-reaching mind conceive so honorable a plan, the 
outgrowth of pure parental devotion? 

Arthur Firmin Jack was a boy who impressed you, and the world 
has sustained a loss by the direful calamity that carried him into 
eternity. 

Let us say, peace to his ashes, and in this Easter tide of budding 
flowers place a chaplet on his green grave and drop a tear to the 
memory of that brilliant mind and good name. 

To you, his classmates of the High School, let me say your history 
is illumined by having in your rank and file a genius disguised by 
years. Foster his memory, and as you see with the eye of imagina- 
tion his broken form lying cold and stiff within the charnal house, let 
your benediction be, 

"May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." 



A memorial service for Arthur Firmin Jack, the High School stu- 
dent who was killed by a fall from the eleventh story of the Betz 
Building, in Philadelphia, last November, was held on the afternoon 
of March 29th, at the Walnut Street Theater. Had the boy lived until 
that day he would have celebrated his sixteenth birthday. The exer- 
cises commenced with a prayer by Rev. C. Lockwood Fulforth, which 
was follow^ed by hymns sung by a double quartet from Dumont's 
Minstrels. An address on behalf of the faculty by Charles A. Her- 
rick, of the Central High School staff, followed. Arthur J. Henry, a 
classmate, spoke on behalf of the class to which Arthur belonged. 
Andrew McFarland, principal of the Northeast Grammar School, and 
Dr. T. Chalmers Fulton, President Emeritus of the Cooper Literary 
Institute, each made an address. Mrs. K. G. Brennan rendered two 
solos, accompanied by Hermann D. Cotter, who acted as organist. 
Bro. John Jack, the lad's father, read letters to condolence from various 
lodges of the Order of Elks, w^hich had been sent to him, and also read 
extracts from manuscripts which his son had written. He said, that in 
order to get a better view of the Mint, about which he was to 



136 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

write an essay, the boy had taken his stand at the lofty window. 
Captain Jack said he made this statement to clearly disprove any 
suggestion of a possible suicide.— The Pacific Elk, Portland, Oregon. 

* * * 

PLUNGED TO AN AWFUL DEATH. 

A Boy Falls from the Twelfth Floor of the Betz Building— Fearful 
Fate of an Actor's Son. 

Arthur Firmin Jack, a High School Boy, and Youngest Son of Captain 

John Jack, Goes Up to the Twelfth Floor of the Betz Buiiding, and 

In Some Way Falls Out of a Rear Window — His Body, Whirling 

Through the Air, First Striking the Roof of the Mint, and is then 

Dashed to Pieces on the Stone Pavement Below — He was a Very 

Bright Boy, and there Seems to be No Motive for Suicide. 

Arthur Firmin Jack, a tall and robust boy, not yet 16 years old, 
and the youngest son of Captain John Jack, the veteran actor, has 
been living in this city for the past seven weeks at Mrs. McCord's 
boarding house, 1335 Brandywine street, while his mother stopped at 
406 Sixth avenue, in New York, and his father was playing on the 
road In Joseph Jefferson's company. He came here to attend the 
High School, and has been a diligent student there ever since it opened 
after the summer vacation. 

At 8 o'clock yesterday morning young Jack ate breakfast and left 
his boarding house for the ostensible purpose of exchanging a book 
at the Philadelphia Public Library. He turned up at the Chestnut 
street entrance to the Betz Building a little before 10 o'clock and took 
an elevator to the twelfth floor. No one knew him, and the elevator 
conductor afterwards recalled him only by the fact that he wore his 
overcoat collar turned up high about his neck. Business was very 
brisk in the big office building about that time. 

DROPPED 125 FEET TO DEATH. 

The boy went straight into the lavatory on the rear of the twelfth 
floor and closed the door behind him. From this room a narrow win- 
dow, five feet above the floor, looks down on the roof of the Mint 
and a paved courtyard twenty-four feet wide, which separates the 
Mint from the Betz and Girard buildings. This courtyard is 125 feet 
below the window, and the building rises straight up from it to a 
height which makes a man dizzy to look at. 

Shortly after Jack went into the lavatory his body fell out of the 
window and shot forward and downward through the air with fearful 
velocity. He seemed to have jumped from the ledge, for he crossed the 
twenty-four feet separating the rear of the Betz Building from the 
Mint during the first eighty feet of his descent, and struck a window 
in the mansard roof, breaking the glass into a thousand pieces. Then 
the body rebounded and fell down into the courtyard with a noise that 
sounded like an explosion. During Its flight it had turned round and 
round half a dozen times. 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 137 

A hundred people were quickly attracted to the spot where the 
mangled remains lay, and blood flowed down the courtyard in a little 
stream almost to Chestnut street. The body had struck on its back 
and shoulders, and was crushed in so far that the arms were driven 
a long ways out of their sockets. Nearly every bone was fractured 
in one or more places and death must have been Instantaneous. 

NO MOTIVE FOR SUICIDE. 

From papers found on the body it v\^as speedily identified, and E. 
T. Swift, who resides at the Brandy wine street house, came down to 
claim it. A wagon from J. Lewis Good's undertaking establishment 
removed it, and all signs of the tragedy were cleared away. William 
C. McKean, Jr., agent for the building; Superintendent Camp, and 
Deputy Wolf, of the Coroner's office, investigated the case, but they 
could learn nothing more than that the boy had gone up to the twelfth 
floor, and had in some way fallen down to his awful death. 

Word was telegraphed to his father, who is playing at BufCalo, 
and to his mother. George Reed, of the Walnut Street Theater, brother 
of Roland Reed, the actor, is the boy's uncle, and his only relative 
at present in this city. Mr. Reed admitted young Jack to the theater 
on Friday night, and the boy seemed to be in the best of health and 
spirits. So far as is known, there was no possible reason for his kill- 
ing himself, and Mr. Reed says he is sure that his sudden death was 
the result of an accident. 

The boy's mother was Annie Firmin, at one time a well-known 
actress, and he was born in Paris. He was of quiet, studious habits, 
and was not given to going out much. He had no business, so far as 
is known, in the Betz Building, and had never been there before. The 
Coroner will hold an inquest next week.— Philadelphia newspaper clip- 
ping. 

* * * 

STORY OF THE ACCIDENT-TOLD BY THE FATHER. 

The High School building being inadequate to accommodate the 
increase of school attendants, his and several other classes of the 
Freshmen occupied a building at Broad and Mt. Vernon Streets. The 
new High School building on the west side of Broad Street was grow- 
ing in proportion, and of much interest to the scholars, particularly 
to those of the Annex. 

One of the young Professors (Lacy, I think), conversing with 
Arthur about the new structure, surprised at the intelligence he dis- 
played on the subject, suggested that he should prepare a school paper 
on Philadelphia, and some of her prominent buildings, saying it would 
be good practice, and he was sure he would do himself credit. The 
boy, proud of such encouragement, thanked him for the suggestion, 
and at once gave it his earnest attention. The evening before the 
disaster, at his home, he had an argument with a lad, the son of the 
family he lived with, about the height of the Betz Building, in the 
course of which the lad, whose father had been a former employee 



128 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

in the U. S. Mint, which adjoins the Betz Building, spoke of what 
could be seen, looking from the Betz, through a window of the Mint, 
where, he said, you could see the working of the U. S. Mint as plainly 
as if you were in the Mint itself. No doubt this dwelt in Arthur's 
mind as a good point to see and realize, that it might be made a 
dramatic point in his description of the Betz, in his school paper. 
This information we get from a lady boarder who was present at the 
supper table during the talk between the father, son and Arthur. 

Doubtless this was the object of his visit on that fateful morning; 
having to pass the building on his return from the library, he evidently 
entered it, and, ascending by the elevator to the twelfth story, to find 
only a barren hallway, his innate modesty restrained him from enter- 
ing an office with a request to have a look from its window, but on the 
eastern end of the hall is a "woman's" toilet and on the floor below a 
"men's," so he must have descended and entered it. In it are two Avin- 
dows five feet from the floor. Below the window on the right is a 
sink two and a half feet high, and from it to the window on the left 
the marbles that separate the urinals reach to the sills of the windows. 
That above the sink was filled with architect's blue maps to be de- 
veloped in the sunlight, so, to get a look from the left window he had 
to raise himself and perch upon the marble slabs. The windows are 
28 inches wide, and the lower sash, when raised, makes an opening 
of 24 inches. To get a view, from his stature (he was 5 feet lOy^ inches 
tall), he would have to crouch his person. In doing this from his peril- 
ous perch on the marble slab, as he looked out and perhaps dazed and 
made giddy by the act, he lost his balance, and in trying to save him- 
self, his hands grasping for the Avail may have given his body a mo- 
mentum that sent it forAvard and across the intervening space that 
separates the buildings, striking his feet on the sill of the window of 
the Mint. The silly story of the sight to be seen therein had led him to 
make the desperate and fatal venture— the rebound from this ^concus- 
sion sent his body back across the space, striking Avith his left elbow 
the corrugated iron flume, making a deep indentation therein, and 
falling through the wire screen into the basement area, where it was 
found. 

The Avearing the collar of his coat turned up was a boyish fad that 
I had noticed in him. 

This minute interpretation of the cause, and the accident, is made 
to refute the scandalous and heartless charge of the Superintendent 
of the Betz Building, that the lad had got out of the window, and, 
standing on the iron braces that support the ventilator flume, had 
jumped to his destruction. His audacity was properly rebuked by the 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 129 

Coroner at the Inquest, and he is thus mentioned, that he may be held 
in detestation by the reader for his cruel action. Even after the con- 
clusion of the inquest, when approached by a friend of the boy's 
family, with a hope that the owners might be induced to place a guard 
against a recurrence of the dreadful calamity, he ordered him away 
with the remark: "The boy jumped out of the window. We don't 
want any cranks around here." "A dog's obeyed in office." 

To the noble and efficient Coroner, Samuel C. Ashbridge, and his 
undertaker, Mr. I. Lewis Goode, the respect and thanks of the family 
are given for their care and humane disposition of the remains until 
claimed by his parents. 

The recognition of the disaster and the respect paid the youth by 
the Teachers of the Central High and North East Grammar Schools, 
in placing the flags at half mast and dismissing the pupils that they 
might pay their respect to their late companion, the floral and written 
tributes of his Class, D. 6, together with the tender and Christian eulo- 
gism of President Mr. Ellis Thompson, of the Central High School, all 
contribute to assuage the grief-stricken family, in displaying the esteem 
in which their noble son was held. 

To Philadelphia Lodge, No. 2, B. P. O. Elks, the father, a brother 
Elk, returns his fraternal thanks for similar floral and personal atten- 
tion, and in whose burial lot the mortal remains of his precious son are 
consigned to rest in peace along with what was mortal of his father's 
deceased friends and associates. 



ONLY THE DEATH OF A BOY. 

From the Pacific Elk, Portland, Oregon. 

Yes, he was only a boy. Though endowed with all the graces of 
character that fit a true Elk for the mission of the order, his youth 
precluded him from membership. He met death in Philadelphia, and as 
soon as the sad news reached Portland, the lodge home of his father, 
the great heart of Elkdom in Oregon's metropolis went out across the 
Rockies to the far off Quaker city in sympathy. The death we chron- 
icle and which furnishes a few thoughts on the principles of the brother- 
hood to which it is a princely privilege to belong, is that of Arthur 
Firmin Jack, son of Bro. John Jack, the well known actor, and Annie 
Firmin Jack, his wife. Arthur was killed In a fall from the Betz 
Building. The Philadelphia lodge of Elks heard of the sad death, and 
at once extended the practical charity that is preached only in its 
practice. No questions were asked. It mattered not whether the 
young man was an Elk or not. There was an opportunity to lend a 



130 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

helping hand and that was sufficient. The hands of Elks were ex- 
tended in brotherly sympathy to the bereaved parents, the hands of 
Elks covered the casket with garlands, the hands of Elks bore the 
lifeless clay to the cemetery and there consigned it to the grave in an 
Elk's burial plot. This is the religion of the Benevolent and Protective 
Order of Elks; this is true Elkdom. 

The funeral of the unfortunate lad was largely attended by mem- 
bers of the Philadelphia lodge of Elks, teachers and classmates from 
the Central High School, .n which he was a student, and friends. 
The funeral ceremonies were of an exceptionally impressive character, 
and the final parting between the bereaved parents and their son was 
as affecting as it was pathetic. Tears of sympathy gushed involun- 
tarily down the solemn faces of all present, though it was not until the 
father, John Jack, leaned over the coffin to taLe a farewell look of his 
dead son as the minister urew towards the close of his consoling words, 
and the composed mother knelt aown before the casket, pressing, as 
she did, the cold and rigid hand, that the pent-up feeling of the assem- 
bled company broke forth. 

The life-like form of the young student reposed in a white casket, 
very appropriately decorated, at the foot lying a tribute of roses and 
chrysanthemums formed into pillars and wide-open gate, from his co- 
workers— the members of the High School freshman class. Around the 
room were scattered other tributes of affection, many of them from the 
loving hands of Elks. The funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. 
Chas. L. Fulforth, pastor of the Church of the Messiah, after which 
Prof. Ellis Thompson, president of the Boys' High School, said a few 
words on behalf of the school, its faculty and its pupils. 

During Professor Thompson's address, Bro. Jack stood at the right 
of the casket, against the flower-strewn mantel-piece, while the mother 
of the student knelt before the coffin with the stiff hand entwined in 
hers. 

"It is only out of justice that I speak now," broke forth Mr. Jack, 
in a demonstrative way, after the prayer had been delivered. He 
smoothed the high brow of his son, and between tears and sighs fal- 
tered, "he was good and kind; he was our only boy, but in his heart 
beat a kindly, lovable spirit, and he would have gone forth in the 
world as my only legacy— a legacy, though, which, perhaps, would 
have wiped out many of his loving father's shortcomings." 

The tears trickled fast down Mr. Jack's cheeks as he moved away, 
and after a few inaudible words from Mrs. Jack, they left the side 
of the casket. The interment took place in the Elk's plot, at Mt. Moriah 
cemetery, one of the first places of sepulture dedicated tp the order, 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 181 

Eulogies to the memory of the deceased were delivered not only in 
the lodge room of Portland lodge, but at the annual memorial services 
December 1st as well. Furthermore, a committee consisting of Bros. 
D. Solis Cohen, R. E. French and A. R. Ockerman, was appointed by 
the lodge to draft resolutions extending to Bro. Jack the sympathy of 
his brothers in Portland, and expressing the thanks of the lodge for the 
sympathy extended and services rendered by Philadelphia lodge. 

The resolutions sent 3ro. Jack are as follows: 
John Jack, Esq., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Dear Sir and Brother:— Ac the regular meeting of the Portland 
Lodge, No. 142, B. P. O. E., held Thursday evening, Nov. 28th, the 
undersigned were appointed a committee ■'o express to you the heart- 
felt sympathy of every member of the lodge which goes out to you in 
the great bereavement which has fallen upon you and your esteemed 
wife. It will be impossiule for us to find words to express all that we 
feel. We shall, therefore, not make the attempt, but will simply as- 
sure you that on the evening mentioned and also at the memorial 
services last Sunday afternoon, our thoughts were with you, and we 
appreciated the greatness of the trial through which the Divine has 
seen fit to make you pass. 

Your son, during his residence in Portland, was known to a great 
many of us and loved by every one who knew him. His manliness 
of character was his chief characteristic, and we feel that he goes 
before his God with a pure soul and an unpolluted mind, fit to receive 
all the grace and favor that there awaits those who have finished their 
earthly career. His preceptor. Dr. Hill, on Sunday afternoon spoke 
beautifully of his character, and we assure you, our brother, that 
away off on this Pacific Coast, during all your trouble, there were those 
whose hearts bled with yours. Fraternally yours, etc. 

This acknowledgment was sent to Philadelphia lodge: 
Philadelphia Lodge, No. 2, B. P. O. B., Philadelphia, Pa. 

Dear Sirs and Brothers:— At a regular meeting of Portland Lodge, 
No. 142, B. P. O. E., held Thursday evening, Nov. 28th, the undersigned 
were appointed a committee to express to you the sincere thanks of 
our lodge for the sympathy and services which you extended to our 
brother, John Jack, in his late bereavement. We assure you, brothers, 
that we appreciate your actions as an evidence of that fraternity 
which binds us strongly together, despite all space and distance, and 
we feel that every heart throb which you gave to our dear brother in 
his terrible affliction was an expression of the spirit which we will 
always bless and be characteristic of our beloved order. 

Fraternally yours, etc. 



133 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

Bishop Scott Academy, J. W. Hill, M. D., Principal. 

Portland, Oregon, Jan. 13th, 1896. 
Mr. John Jack, New York, N. Y. 

My Dear Sir:— I was pleased to receive your letter of last December, 
and to know that you had received any consolation from the fact that 
I had been called upon to say a few words in recognition of the noble 
qualities of your departed son at the Lodge of Sorrows recently held 
by the Elks, I made no notes or memoranda at that time, and the 
enclosed copy is reproduced from memory. Without the surrounding 
circumstances, I cannot do as well in writing as I did in speaking to 
the Lodge. Spoken words at their very best are cold, but written 
words are ever more so. Under the circumstances, it is the best I 
can do. 

I wish to assure you and your wife of my most hearfelt sympathy 
in this, your hour of affliction, and to express my own pleasure at 
being able to assist you, even in the slightest degree, to lighten your 
load of sorrow. Sincerely yours, 

(Signed) J. W. HILL. 



DR. J. HILL'S ADDRESS AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE OF PORT- 
LAND LODGE, NO. 14-2, B. P. O. ELKS, HELD SUNDAY, 
NOV. 28, 1895, AT PORTLAND, OREGON- 

Exalted Ruler and Members of the Lodge:— 

When called upon last evening by your Exalted Ruler to make a 
short address, I hesitated before complying from no motive except 
that I felt I was scarcely able to do full justice to the subject and to 
myself. 

My first acquaintance with Master Jack began in the school year 
of 1891, when the lad was brought to my school by his noble father, 
John Jack. My impression of the lad at first sight was favorable, 
and the feeling gradually grew stronger until it ripened into an attach- 
ment second only to that of a father for his son, that which an earnest, 
conscientious teacher must feel for a proper boy placed under his care 
and guidance. 

If I could mention any one trait which belonged peculiarly to this 
lad to distinguish him from others of his age, I would say that it 
was his earnestness of purpose and his high sense of honor in all his 
dealings. He had a lovely, loving and lovable disposition, and soon 
made himself a general favorite with all whom he came in contact 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 133 

with. This characteristic of earnestness was most marked in all his 
dealings, and he seemed old and dignified beyond his years. It seemed 
to me, and I say it with all reverence, as though he had, even at that 
age, been marked by the Supreme Ruler of all for his own, and now 
we find that He has called him to Himself. 

No man having any trust in the Supreme Ruler can feel within 
his own soul that such lives as this of which I am now speaking are 
lived in vain, or that they end in the grave, but must feel that they 
are only an introduction to a higher and better life. 

None but a father who has seen his heart's delight fade away be- 
fore his very eye can realize the depth of sorrow that your friend has 
been called upon to bear. 

To the sorrowing father and mother, and to you, their friends, I 
can only add that this great sorrow will be softened by time, and that 
it will gradually fade into a blessed memory, and that they will 
realize, as time goes on, that they have only cast an anchor on the 
other side. 

* * * 

At a meeting of the Freshman Class of the Central High School, 
held November 18th, 1895, the following resolutions were adopted: 

Whereas, It has pleased Almighty God in His inscrutable wisdom 
to remove from a happy and useful career among us our beloved class- 
mate, Arthur Firmin Jack . 

Resolved, That while bowing in submission to the Divine Decree, 
we desire to take this opportunity of expressing our sense of the loss 
that has befallen us. 

Although associated but a short time, we had learned to appreciate 
and value rightly the many good and manly qualities which had en- 
deared him to us as a Classmate, and which rendered his future so 
hopeful and promising. The manly sincerity of his character, the 
sturdy self-reliance of his disposition, his wide and varied knowledge, 
and his Christian courtesy have not been without influence upon us, 
and the memory of his life will be truly cherished by those with whom 
he worked. 

Be it further resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be sent 
the bereaved parents as an expression of the sincere sympathy of the 
Freshman Class; that they be entered at large upon the minutes of 
the Class, and that they be published in the C. H. S. Mirror. 

H. IRWIN, 
A. HENRY, 
A. JAMES, 

Philadelphia. Committee. 



134 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

Philadelphia, December 5th, 1895. 
Whereas, Our member, John H. Jack, has sustained a great per- 
sonal and irreparable loss. In the sudden and accidental loss of his dear 
and beloved son, Arthur Firmin Jack, 

Be it Resolved, That this school, the Cooper Literary Institute, 
of Philadelphia, extends its unanimous sympathy to him and his dear 
wife, in this the hour of their bereavement and trial. 

And be it Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be entered 
upon the minutes, and a written copy be sent to the afflicted parents. 
Attest: 

President, ORMAND RAMBO. 
Secretary, JOHN B. LOMAS. 

T. CHALMERS FULTON, 
RUDOLPH KINDIG. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

(From the Offlcial Organ of the Associated Alumni of the Central High School, Phila- 
delphia, Pa., ''The Mirror,'' December, 1895.) 

"The sudden and awful death of Arthur F. Jack threw a pall of 
sadness over the entire school. Young Jack had just entered the 
school, but already had won the love of his fellows and the good will 
of the faculty. All who knew him liked him, and the frightful acci- 
dent which caused his death was a shock to all; but God in His infinite 
wisdom chose to take him to Himself, and all we can do is to pray that 
when our time comes we may leave as good a record as did this boy. 

The Mirror extends its sincere sympathy to the bereaved family, 
and laments with them the death of one so young and yet so full of 
promise." 

DEATH OF ARTHUR JACK. 

Through a touching letter received on Monday from John Jack 
by our townsman, Hon. R. L. Grove, we learn of the death through a 
terrible accident of the lad whose name appears above. He was a 
winsome lad, 15 years of age, and of promising talents. Many of our 
readers will remember him only as a bright-eyed, cooing baby, as he 
was trundled about the village by his devoted parents in his infancy, 
and deeply will they sympathize with the nearly heart-broken parents 
whose brightest star has departed from their lives. 

The lad met his death by a fall from near the top of the Betz Build- 
ing at Philadelphia while endeavoring to obtain a view, of which he 
was to write in an essay being prepared in connection with his school 
duties, he being a student of the Central High School of that city. 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 135 

Many of their old-time Waukesha friends will sympathize deeply with 
Mr. and Mrs. Jack in their great sorrow.— Waukesha, Wis., Freeman, 
Dec. 5th, 1895. 



THE JACK MEDAL OF HONOR. 

Mr. John Jack, the distinguished actor, has prepared a medal of 
honor in memoriam of his son, Arthur Firmin Jack, who met his death 
about a year ago as the result of a most unfortunate accident. The 
young man was a most promising student at the Central High School, 
and his father has determined to make some fitting recogniton of the 
esteem and affectionate regard of his classmates by offering to the 
most successful student this handsome medal of honor. It will be 
presented at a meeting of the class to be held next week to Joseph 
Morgenthein Herzberg. 

ARTHUR FIRMIN JACK MEDAL. 

GIVEN BY THE FATHER IN MEMORY OF HIS DEAD SON— A 

LETTER FROM THE WINNER. 

The Arthur Firmin Jack medal of honor for the Central High 
School, awarded Joseph M. Herzberg, is a very handsome tribute pre- 
pared by Captain John Jack in memory of his son. By keeping his 
name associated with his class the father hopes, while honoring his boy, 
to make his remembrance an incentive for his companions to persevere 
in their studies and so continue a factor in the class until its commence- 
ment in '99, when a more costly trophy shall be presented to the 
senior who makes the record of the class. 

The family of young Herzberg write that "it is an auspicious omen 
for Joseph that he is honored with that beautiful token of love of a 
father for his sou. Having been parted from his father, whose death 
only occurred a few months ago, this noble gift, which he gained by 
his studies, will remind his constantly of a father's devotion." 

The recipient writes to Captain Jack: "I fully appreciate your 
kindness to D. 6 Class. As in life he was our friend, so in death he 
will be nearer enshrined in our hearts." 

Young Herzberg is in St. Louis, whei'e he will pass his vacation, 
and the presentation of the medal has been postponed until the class 
reassembles in September. The medal was designed by the father. 

DIPLOMAS FOR HIGH SCHOOL BOYS. 

John Jack, the actor, presented to Joseph M. Herzberg, president of 
the freshman class, of which his son, who recently died, was a member, 



136 MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 

a medal with a picture of his son engraved thereon, and this in- 
scription: 

"Medal of Honor, Freshman Class, Central High School, Phila- 
delphia, May, 1896." 

Arthur Firmin Jack, it will be remembered, fell from the tenth 
story of the Betz Building some months ago, and was instantly killed. 
He was a most promising lad, and a great favorite with the professors 
and his classmates. 

HIS LAST VISIT. 

The father said:— 

I had arranged that on the Friday, Nov. 1st, two weeks before the 
dreadful occurrence, that, after school that day he should come to us 
in New York, that he might be measured for a suit of clothes and be 
provided with an overcoat and a reefer which he had set his heart 
upon. He came, and his boyish love was evident in his every action. 
On the Sunday his buoyant spirit had full sway, in affectionately 
caressing the various members of the family, his dying Grandmother, 
his affectionate Aunts and his hopeful Mother, were especial objects of 
his love, while the bald spot upon my aging head felt the impress of his 
filial love in kisses that hourly left their influence on the heart and 
spirit of a fond and loving parent. 

If there is an intuition vouchsafed us, unknowingly, to anticipate 
the end, that noble soul was filled with it, though it took the form of 
happiness— happiness made more Impressive by the experience of an 
unusual separation. 

In the evening we accompanied him to the R. E. Station. As the 
boat was entering the dock at Jersey City, he, his mother and her 
sister were advancing from the cabin, I following. Casting his eye 
about, he observed me, and coming to me placed his arm about my 
neck with the remark, "Pop, I have had a splendid visit." I replied, 
"Arthur, I am glad to hear you say so." "Oh, I am very comfortable 
over there (Philadelphia), and they do everything to make me so, but 
I was getting a little lonely— but this visit has made me very happy, 
and I go back to my school work with pleasure. Give me a kiss. Pop., 
another one"— and so, with his arm about my neck we passed on to the 
wharf and to the station, where, finding that the train scheduled 
45 minutes later preceded the one then starting in reaching Phila- 
delphia, we enjoyed another brief hour with the dear one. We were 
permitted to enter the gate, and after an affectionate leave taking, 
his mother having placed him in a seat in the car, the train started, 
we throwing kisses to each other, his beautiful face was lighted with 
love, his sparkling eyes beaming through the dark lashes that en- 



MEMORIAL SBRVIOBS AND TRIBUTES. 187 

circled them, glanced towards us, all that the affectionate heart 
prompted, while his manly impulse to restrain the tears that unbidden 
filled them, was apparent in the firm compression of his lips— thus, 
with the outward speeding of the train he passed from our sight. As 
I looked into the void before me, with his visage alone in my memory, 
an impulsive thought depressed me, "should anything happen to him?" 
With a determined effort, that has ever been my support when danger 
threatened, whether it was in a storm at sea or in the raging violence 
of an action in battle, I cast it aside, and so,— my beloved became a 
memory— a father's dream had vanished. 

A fortnight later, in the grim environment of an undertaker's room 
I was gazing on all that was mortal of my pride, my hope, inanimate, 
beautiful and noble in death, the lofty brow that betokened a mind 
filled with love and ambition, was a stilled mask, the spirit that had 
controlled it was fled forever and the possibilities of a useful life, 
shrouded in the grim mystery of the future. Let us hope that a perusal 
of his work may lead to such action in others as will prove his brief 
career in life had not been in vain. 



EXTRACT FROM HIS LAST LETTER. 

1335 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia, Nov. 10th, 1895. 
Dear Mama and Pop,— 

The day is dreary and rainy, but I am contented enough. Am 
afraid New York, is the same, still I hope you are all in good spirits. 

This is your last day in New York, for some time to come, isn't 
it, Pop? You must be very busy preparing for the road. Hope your 
departure does not make either of you downhearted, though you can 
hardly help regretting it. l^ope we can all be together some day and 
remain so. 

Sent the following financial account to brother Ned. 
(Note.— His half-brother, Edwin B. Jack, had undertaken to furnish 
him with funds during his school term.) 
$25.00 Reed. Nov. 8th. 

$4.00 Board, due last Tuesday. 

.61 Wash, 2 stiff shirts made it extra large. 

.05 Soda water. 

.05 Foolscap paper. 

.10 Belt mended on old unmended side. 



4.81 
$20.19 on hand. 



188 MEMORIAL SBRVIOBS AND TRIBUTES. 

From this, ten cents more should be subtracted, for I paid ten cents 
car fare out to West Philadelphia to see a schoo chum out there yes- 
terday. Will account for this in next "financial report." 



Spoke to McGords about gas, ■'.hey'U have the pipe plugged up and 
give me a bracket lamp instead. 

Best of luck to "Rip" and "Derrick" and to all, from 

Your 1( ving son, 

ARTHUR FIEMIN JACK. 

Extracts from his parents' letters received by him that morning 
and found upon his person, and made more precious by the life blood 
of the dear object of their solicitude. 

Nov. 15, 1895. 
My Dear Son:— 

Your two postals came to-day. In regard to writing, I would say I 
only regarded your postals as a loving remembrance of each day, 
and they cheered my life and heart as God's sunshine always does. 
Well, there may not be a personal God, but there is surely a divine and 
tender nature which never fails ore who is true to it. One would do 
well to throw themselves more for sympathy upon nature than upon 
man. In any and every trouble, 1 have had to commune with nature 
to soothe my soul. Never write a line to me unless your heart prompts 
it. It only hurts me to feel that anything you could do for me would 
not be spontaneously from your heart. 

I have been suffering from a severe cold. I did not intend writing 
to either you or your father in regard to it. This is a fault I have, of 
writing brightly, or not Lt all. I have an insane objection to writing 
dismals, in consequence, all my life, have been misunderstood from my 
very mother to yourself. * * * Neither of you have written 
an extra line of tenderness saying, "our dear one may be suffering 
from separation of the iwo nearest and dearest to her, she is sur- 
rounded by disease, sickness, poverty— and at times hardness. She 
is a woman— who lives on affection and sympa^ay and has so little 
near her. 

I will write her a dear, sweet letter expressing all the love, tender- 
ness and sympathy I feel and owe her, God bless her." I used to write 
thus to my mother and Grandmother. ♦ ♦ * sent two 

postals of yours to Papa and wrote two letters. ♦ ♦ ♦ i feel 
that you and he do Lot quite understand. MAMA. 



MEMORIAL SERVICES AND TRIBUTES. 18© 

To this letter he wrote and mailed that fatal morning, Saturday, 
Nov. 16th, on a postal: 
Dear Mama:— 

You must not think I write unlovingly or mechanically, but to-day 
I am going to send you n big, fat letter. Lovingly, 

AHTHUK. 



FROM HIS FATHER. 

Albany, N. Y., Nov. 13th, 1895. 
My Dear Son:— 

I have not yet had any of your daily missives. This is a series of 
ovations to Mr. Jefferson. Last night and night before, played to over 
forty-one hundred dollars on the two nights. Monday he lectured at 
Vassar College, and last night at Smith's (lady) Academy. I enclose 
sample of flowers. It is a very pleasant company. Your papa, 

JOHN JACK. 

To which he replied: 
Dear Pop:— 

Reed, your postal this (Saturday) morning. Have written daily 
to mama. I hope she forwards to you. Poor Mamsey has a bad cold. 
Reed, letter from ber to-day with your postal. Lovingly, 

ARTHUR. 

Both of these cards were stamped at the Philadelphia office 10:30, 
Nov. 16th, ten or fifteen minutes after he had joined his God. 



BIOGRAPHY 



141 




Arthur Firmin Jack. 
Aged 9 months. 



143 



BIOGRAPHY. 



Arthur Firmin Jack was born in Paris, France, March 30th, 1880, 
while his parents, John Jack, and Annie Firmin Jack, were returning 
from their professional tour around the world. 

He was a splendidly developed child, his mother's physician, Dr. 
Herbert, brother of Lord Arnichon, the late Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 
congratulated her upon having given birth to the finest specimen of 
boy babyhood he had ever brought into the world. 

He displayed extraordinary reasoning faculties early in childhood, 
was carefully reared, and besides home tuition, he was allowed every 
opportunity for school, that his parents' nomadic life permitted. In an 
address before his class at the North East Grammar School, Phila- 
delphia, he said he had gathered such education as he possessed in 
thirteen different schools throughout the United States, and Canada, in 
periods of a few weeks to a few months, the only full term he had 
enjoyed was at the Bishop Scott Academy, at Portland, Oregon, where 
he came out at the head of his class with tha highest average in the 
school. 

Serving one month less than the full term at the North East Gram- 
mar School, he passed through the eleventh and twelfth grades, and 
was admitted in the spring of '95 to the Central High School, where, 
though less than three months a student, he had won the attention and 
respect of the faculty and the love and admiration of his fellow 
students. 

As Secretary of his Class D. C. Association, he had formulated a 
constitution and a formula of laws for its guidance which we think 
worthy of a place in this brief review of his life. 

CONSTITUTION OF SECTION D. 6, OF CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL 
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA. 

ARTICLE I. 

NAME. 

The name of this organization shall be the Section D. 6. Class 
Association. 



146 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

ARTICLE II. 

OBJECT. 

The object of this association shall be to improve its members in 
the art of public speaking, conducting affairs in a deliberative assembly, 
and to promote the physical, as well as mental, health of all members 
by the formation of athletic clubs to contest in healthful sports. 

ARTICLE III. 
MEMBERS. 

Sec. 1. Membership in this association is confined exclusively to 
the members of the Freshmen Class, Section D. 6, of the Central High 
School, in the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Sec. 2. Members can be suspended and expelled by a two-thirds 
vote, the president presiding impartially as judge during trial. Counsel 
and witnesses may appear at such a trial for and against the accused, 
all testimony being carefully weighed. 

Sec. 3 .Anyone about to become a member must affix his signature 
to the constitution to complete his initiation. 

ARTICLE IV. 
OFFIGJ.RS. 

Sec. 1. The officers of the club shall consist of a President, a Vice- 
President, a Secretary, r, Treasurer, a Mirror Correspondent and a 
Class Representative. 

Sec. 2. All officers shall be elected at the first meeting of each 
school year. 

Sec. 3. It shall be the duty of the President, Vice-President, Secre- 
tary, Treasurer, Mirror Correspondent, and Class Representative to 
faithfully discharge the duties required of such officers in an associa- 
tion of this character. Their duties are explained explicitly in the 
Rules of Procedure. 

Sec. 4. Any member of the association, in good standing, is eligible 
to election to any office for one term of one year, extending from the 
election at the first meeting of the school year until the first meeting 
of the next school year. 

Sec. 5. No officer can succeed himself, but is eligible to any other 
office he has not occupied. 

Sec. 6. An officer can hold but one office at a time. 

Sec. 7. The line of succession, in case of removal of officers by any 
cause, is as follows: 

Vice-President succeeds President. 

Secretary succeeds v ice-President. 

Treasurer succeeds Secretary. 

Mirror Correspondent succe.dn Treasurer. 

Class Representatiove succeeds Mirror Correspondent. 

No officer is forced, however, to leave his old position for the 
higher one unless he desires to do so. 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 147 

Sec. 8. All officers hold their positions on their good behavior. 
For misdeeds they may be removed from office, suspended or expelled. 
If suspended, it is understood that the officer has lost his position, 
and when he is re-instated is but a member. 

ARTICLE V. 
VOTING. 

Sec. 1. Plurality votes shall elect all officers and pass all motions, 
orders and resolutions but those of suspension of members, expulsion 
of members, re-instatement of members and special taxes. 

Sec. 2. A special tax motion may be carried by a two-thirds vote. 

Sec. 3. A two-thirds vote will re-instate a suspended or expelled 
member. 

ARTICLE VI. 
FINANCES. 

Sec. 1. The monthly membership fee shall be five cents, which 
shall be payable at the first meeting in each school month. 

Sec. 2. These dues shall form the treasury of the association. 

Sec. 3. Any member, who shall not have paid his dues on or be- 
fore the second regular meeting of the month, shall be notified by 
the secretary, that at the next regular meeting if he is still delinquent 
he will be expelled. 

Sec. 4. The Treasurer shall be responsible for all funds placed in 
his keeping by this association, and shall not pay out anything, unless 
by the association's vote to do so. 

ARTICLE VII. 
MEETINGS. 

Sec. 1. The regular meetings of this association shall be on the 
Friday afternoons of each month during term time. 

Sec. 2. Special meetings may be called by the President, and 
he shall call a special meeting at the request in writing of three mem- 
bers of the association. 

ARTICLE VIII. 

AMENDMENTS. 

This constitution may be altered or amended by a two-thirds vote 
of the members, notice of such alteration or amendment having been 
given at a previous meeting. 

RULES OF PROCEDURE. 

ARTICLE I. 

OFFICERS AND THEIR DUTIES. 

Section 1. It is the duty of the President to call the meeting to 
order at the appointed time, to preside at all meetings, to announce 



148 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

the business before the assembly in its proper order, to state and put 
all questions properly brought before the assembly, to preserve order 
and decorum, and to decide all questions of order (subject to an appeal). 
When he "puts a question" to vote, and when speaking upon an appeal, 
he should stand; in all other cases, he can sit. In all cases where 
his vote w^ould affect the result, or where the vote is by ballot, he can 
vote. When a member rises to spealv, he should say "Mr. President," 
and the President should reply, "Mr. A." (giving name). He should 
not interrupt a speaker so long as the speaker is in order, but should 
listen to his speech, which should be addressed to him and not to the 
assembly. The President should be careful to abstain from the ap- 
pearance of partisanship, but he has the right to call another member 
to the chair while he addresses the assembly on a question; but when 
speaking he does not leave the chair. 

Section 2. The Secretary should keep a record of the proceedings 
of the association. It is not his duty to record discussions, but only 
the resolutions, motions, orders, or whatever the action of the Society 
may be called. He should record every vote, stating whether the mo- 
tion or resolution, which had been offered was adopted or rejected. 

It is sometimes customary in the records to say that the question 
was discussed by Messrs. A., B. and C. in the affirmative, and D., E. 
and F. in the negative. 

It is necessary for a Secretary to keep constantly in mind, in mak- 
ing his records, it is the fact that he is to record, not what was said, 
but what was done. 

The constitution, and the rules of procedure should be written 
in a book with blank pages, writing only on the right-hand page. The 
left-hand page should be left blank, on which amendments to the arti- 
cles opposite may be entered, if there should be any. Each amend- 
ment should have recorded wath it a reference to the date and page 
of the minutes where the action of the association adopting such 
amendment is recorded. 

It is customary to insert the constitution and rules of procedure 
in the first part of the association book, after which should be re- 
corded the names of the members. Following these names the pages 
can be used for the minutes of the association. 

Section 3. It is the duty of the treasurer to collect and hold the 
funds belonging to the association, and to pay out money on the order 
of the association. 

The treasurer should make a monthly report to the association, 
which should contain a statement of the amount of money on hand 
at the beginning of the year and month, and amount received during 
the year and month, including the sources through which the money 
has come; and a statement, in brief, of the amount of money paid 
out by order of the association during the year and month, and the 
balance on hand at the end of the month. This report is usually re- 
ferred to an auditing committee, consisting of one or more persons, 
whose duty it is to examine the treasurer's books and vouchers, and 
make a certificate as to the correctness of his report. The form of 
auditor's report is usually something like the following: 

"I hereby certify that I have examined the accounts and vouchers 
of the above report of A. J., the treasurer of the Section D. 6 Class 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 149 

Association, and find them correct, and that the balance on hand is, 
etc.," stating the amount on hand. 

It is usual after the auditor's or auditors' report, to accept the 
treasurer's report. 

Sec. 4. The Mirror Correspondent's duty is to correspond with 
the monthly "Mirror," our school paper, reporting our section news. 

Sec. 5. The class representative's duty is to report the announce- 
ments made in the lecture room of the main building to the section 
in the annex, and he alone is able to hear the announcements. He 
should have a note booli to note all subjects as soon as they are an- 
nounced, thus preventing confusion and mistakes. 

In the absence of any of the above officers an officer pro tem 
(pro tempore, or for the present) is elected to serve; if, however, an 
officer is suspended or expelled, he loses his office, and a successor 
must be chosen by election. 

Sec. 6. In small societies there is less need of committee, for the 
body, as a rule, can act as a whole in a matter. But in some businesses 
it is necessary to have them, especially when there is a great deal of 
business on hand. These sub-committees (for the assembly is really 
the committee of the whole) examine matters referred to them, and 
report to the entire body. 

The first named member of a committee is generally its chair- 
man. It is his duty to call the committee together and to preside at 
their meetings. If he is absent, it is customary for the next member 
in order to preside. A majority of a committee should constitute a 
quorum. The committee should not act unless a quorum be present. 
The committee may make a majority and minority report, if the mem- 
bers do not agree. Individual reports may be made if there is a total 
division. When a majority and minority report have been presented 
to a body, it is competent for any member to move the acceptance 
of the majority report. It is proper for some other member to move 
to substitute the minority for the majority report. The minority re- 
port cannot be acted upon except by such motion to substitute it for 
the majority. When the committee's report has been read and ac- 
cepted, the committee is discharged, without further motion, unless 
their report be a report of progress. 

ARTICLE II. 
TRANSACTION OF BUSINESS. 

Sec. 1. Every order, resolution or motion to be submitted to a 
deliberative assembly should be in writing and having been read 
should be handed to the President. The following will illustrate the 
form of a resolution: 

"Resolved, That the thanks of Section D. 6, Class Association are 
hereby tendered to Mr. (name and reason for resolution stated). 

Sec. 2. A member desiring to offer a resolution or make a motion 
should rise from his seat and address the President by his title "Mr. 
President," who immediately recognizes him, providing he is the first 
or only one to rise. In recognition, the President announces the ris- 
ing member's name. The member then having the fioor, says "I move 
the adoption of the following resolution," which he reads and hands 



160 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

to the president. If some one else seconds the motion, the President 
says: "It has been moved and seconded that the following resolution 
be adopted." He then reads the resolution and says: "Are there any 
remarks upon the resolution?" (He says motion if it is one. Here 
will follow a discussion of the resolution or motion pro and con, if 
the members should be so disposed. If no one rises to speali when the 
question is thrown open for discussion, or it having been discussed 
and the President thinl^s the debate is closed he says: "Are you 
ready for the question?" If no one rises to speak, he puts the question 
in a form similiar to the following: "The question is upon the adop- 
tion of the resolution, which you have heard read. Those of you who 
are in favor of adopting this resolution will manifest it by saying 
'Aye,' those contrary minded 'No.' It is a vote and the resolution is 
adopted." If the majority vote in the negative, the President will 
state that the motion is lost instead of adopted. If he is in doubt, 
he will say: "The chair is in doubt; those in favor of the adoption 
of the resolution will rise and stand until counted." The President 
or Secretary makes the count. "Those opposed will rise," the Presi- 
dent commands at the conclusion of the first count. At the conclu- 
sion of this count the President announces the result. 

Besides his studies at the Grammar School during the term of 
1894-95, he had written three volumes entitled "Chats with my Friend 
the Brahmin," the purpose of this work is alluded to in his introduc- 
tion to the volume, and the loss of two volumes of which, by some 
sneak thief, has been a great disappointment to his parents while at 
the same time it is a serious loss to those seeking information on 
the subject of India. 

During the same term, while only fourteen years of age he had 
written his story of "Chet, a Newspaper Reporter on the Expounder," 
a Southern daily, to which the reader is referred. 

When scarcely five years of age, 1885, he visited the South, with 
his parents, and had ten months' experience in many of the towns 
and cities of the Gulf States. The information and results of obser- 
vation then gathered is the basis of his depiction of Southern life 
as contained in his story. 

His memory was somewhat remarkable, for in the wanderings 
of his parents he would, with companions, run through his adventures, 
from leaving New York City, in 1885, up to his crossing to the Pacific 
Coast, in 1888, on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, in which he would 
enumerate each town or city he had visited, giving the population 
of each place, the back country, and their products, resources, etc., 
that supplied it, and never would he omit mentioning a single one, in 
fact, without preparation, he was able to go from where he was at 
the time, back to his departure from New York City, without Inissiug 
a town or fact. 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 161 

His great amusement, during his play time, was building railroad 
towns; with the debris of the streets or roads he would formulate 
a town with all the adjuncts of buildings, railroads, hotels, etc., that 
go to make up such locations. 

His impulses were all good, his ambitions were to benefit humanity 
by a course of rectitude, honor and industry. 

When eight years of age, walking with his mother on the prairie 
near a Canadian town, while the sheet lightning was fitfully illuminat- 
ing the heavens, he said to her "That is God throwing kisses to his 
children." 

We do not think he ever spoke ill of a human being; if wronged, 
or ill treated, he always had an e'xcuse for his wronger. 

He displayed a remarkable command of language from his earliest 
speaking days. He inclined to syllabilic words. When he would slip 
up in pronunciation, he evidently noted his misslip, for if asked to 
repeat what he had said, after a little though he would reply, using 
a synonym, which invariably would be correct, never by any chance 
attempting to repeat that which he had blundered in.' 

Boy-like, he was fond of playing soldier, with his father. One day 
in '90, in San Francisco, he visited the Cyclorama of "Gettysburg," 
wherein was shown the desperate conflict of the wheatfield. Looking 
up wistfully to his father, he said, "Pop, isn't that murder?" His 
father replied, "Yes, my child. War is legalized murder." From that 
time his soldier ardor was abated. Not that he was faint-hearted 
or in any degree a coward, but the humanizing impulses of his gentle 
nature prevailed over the brutalizing influence of the warlike spirit. 

He once said: "Pop, I am a free-thinker." 

"Indeed! In what respect?" 

"Why, I never regard a man from the standpoint of the religion 
he professes, or in which he has been reared. It is his personal quali- 
fications and actions that command my respect." 

He possessed excellent dramatic instincts, and would have de- 
veloped into an actor of no mean ability. He played the children's 
parts in emotional play with rare discretion. Upon two occasions, 
when his parents, producing "Under the Gaslight," and Shakespeare's 
"King Heny the Fourth," were without the ladies to play "Peach- 
blossom" in the former, and the "Hostess" in the latter, he, though 
only twelve years of age, undertook the parts from rehearsal, playing 
them perfect at night. As "Peachblossom," his effort was equal to 
any actress they ever had in the character, while as the "Hostess" he 
played with a discretion and intelligence scarcely reached by actresses 
of acknowledged ability. 



152 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

In entertainments given by his parents, in the scenes of "Money- 
penny," from the "Long Strike," he impersonated Retsy, and the Tele- 
graph Operator, very effectively; and sang songs and ballads with 
excellent voice and ability. 

MUNICIPAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACCIDENTS. 

Is there municipal responsibility? Or does the apathy of the gen- 
eral public condone the lack of it? We have made a glorious close 
to a "War of Humanity" in relief of suffering races. And are assum- 
ing grave responsibilities in their behalf, and for the freedom of in- 
dividual worship. While it is "humane" to stay the "car of juggernaut." 
Among religious zealots, would not "humanity" gain force and estab- 
lish purity of intention were we to strive to save the blood of the 
innocents daily sacrificed on our streets in the wild pursuit of Mam- 
mon, to which the following correspondence is relevant: 



Merchants' House, 

Philadelphia, Pa., June, 1896. 
Hon. Chas. F. Warwick, 

Mayor of Philadelphia. 

Dear Sir:— Last January I wrote the Director of Public Safety 
regarding a fatal accident to my son by reason of a fall from the 
eleventh story of the Betz Building. Claiming the accident to be 
the result of criminal carelessness on the part of the proprietor of 
the structure, by reason of leaving unguarded windows placed five 
feet from the floor, but made accessable by means of a sink 2l^ feet 
high, placed under one window, and it, and the other window being 
reached by the marbles that separate the urinals which terminate the 
halls on each floor or story connected by the elevators. The great 
danger from the unguarded windows rests in the fact that their posi- 
tion, at a height that hides the danger from view, and the facility 
with which they can be reached, by means of the sink and marbles, 
being invitations to the unwary, or thoughtless, who cannot realize 
their peril until in it, and then too ?ate to save themselves from the dis- 
aster that follows. These windows are about 28i^ inches wide, and the 
sash, when raised, leaves an opening of about 25 inches in height. 

I claim that although these structures are private property, the 
uses of the rooms and the business of their hundreds of occupants 
drawing visits of thousands daily, make the entrances and hallways 




Arthur Firman Jack. 
Aged 16 months. 



153 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 156 

on each floor, to all intent and purpose public highways, a way for 
all passengers without restriction, and the responsibility for the pro- 
tection and safety of the passenger rests with the said proprietor. 

Mr. Director:— I am impelled to call your attention to this new 
condition that has arisen by the erection of these lofty structures, 
the extent of whose menace to public safety is yet an unsolved quan- 
tity, because I feel assured that your department is the natural chan- 
nel through which to seek investigation that may lead to legislation, 
or legal interference to compel compliance with a due regard for public 
safety. 

These edifices are really speculative ventures created for private 
gain or corporative advertisement, and they have been erected, as al- 
leged, in this case, at least, as stupendous monstrosities in disfigure- 
ment of a costly architectural beauty in a public building. 

Whilst they continue isolated they leave many questions unsettled. 
Should they grow in number and any special locality become con- 
gested with their increase, there is a great probability of their being 
a menace to public health by their antagonism to hygienic precautions, 
tions. 

The method of their construction renders their substantiality a 
question, only to be determined when a contingency may arise that 
will test their quality. Their durability and the solidity of the struc- 
ture being dependent upon the metal framework being able to resist 
the action of the elements they may have to contend with, that may 
cause corrosion of the metal and so weaken the support, or, in case 
of an external or internal fire, may not the stone work of the walls 
be destroyed, exposing the metal to a heat they may be unable to 
withstand, and thus cause a collapse of the mass, to the injury of life 
and property in the vicinity. All these possibilities make them a sub- 
ject for serious consideration and ceaseless watching, if the public 
safety is to be maintained. And every suggestion of danger that may 
arise should be considered, and an effort made to provide against. 

Regarding the entrance and hallways to these buildings as public 
highways, and all reasonable minds must so regard them, the unguard- 
ed and easily approached windows in the lavatories of the different 
stories of the Betz Building are a public menace and a constant dan- 
ger, inviting as they do, the unwary to seek a view, ignorant of the 
peril in which they may place themselves by so doing. Protecting 
such windows, so situated, with a bar or bars becomes necessary, 
and should be compelled; and in considering this, these openings 
should not be confounded with the ordinary windows in the different 
compartments, the latter being in the usual positions to which we 



156 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

are accustomed, the danger can be seen as they are approached, and 
precaution or care taken by those who seek them, those complained 
of being placed above the line of vision do not suggest such precaution, 
and so continue a menace to safety, and should be made secure from 
the possibility of such an accident which lost the precious life of my 
talented son. 

That calamity was not the result of a boyish hazard or idle curios- 
ity, but came in his search for material for school work, and to fit 
himself for it, he had made his visit in the simple line of a duty. Rec- 
ognizing the responsibility, they close the ways to the roof of the 
building, but leave these lavatory windows unguarded, and to escape 
responsibility, with the terrible disaster that befell my boy, the cus- 
todians of the building persist, with a heartlessness which seems in- 
born with avarice, in charging that the act was a premeditated one, 
thus scandalizing the virtuous character of a deserving and industrious 
youth, heaping additional distress upon his bereaved parents, and de- 
fying the popular cry for protection. 

I am aware in asking for a favorable consideration of this com- 
plaint, that I am venturing upon delicate grounds, for those to whom 
my complaint may be referred may hesitate to subscribe to my views, 
as to do so may seem a reflection on those whose duty should have an- 
ticipated such a peril and provided against it. Still, I believe that 
public safety should be paramount, and human error not be maintained 
at the sacrifice of permanent security. Respectfully yours, 

JOHN JACK. 

The above his honor. Mayor Warwick, made reply that the Director 
of Public Safety, Mr. Beitler, had made a careful investigation, and 
could not see that anything could be done. And that he (the Mayor), 
himself, had made a personal examination, and regretted that he 
could do nothing in the matter. 

To which I responded as follows: 



Merchants' House, 

Philadelphia, Pa., July, 1896. 
Hon. Chas. F. Warwick, Mayor of Philadelphia, Pa. 

Dear Sir:— Yours of cue 20th inst. at hand, and I thank you for 
your consideration of my complaint. I had not been favored with 
the views of Director Beitler, but in an interview with Mr. Mylert, 
of the Board of Building Inspection, I received orally the result of 
his inspection, on which the Directors' views were evidently founded. 
In my judgment, the Inspectors' conclusions were lame and impotent. 




Arthur Firman Jack 

At the age of 11. 

Bugler of the Sons of Veterans of the Civil War. 



157 



BIOGRAPHICAL, I59 

I conclude from the Director's report and your own observations that 
the matter is outside the action of the "Board," for want of jurisdic- 
tion, that there is no law extant under which they can act. This 
implies that it is only through legislation the evil complained of can 
be remedied. 

So far, I have been unable to elicit from the authorities one ex- 
pression that could be construed to imply that a danger existed in 
the conditions complained of, not one that might sustain an appeal 
for legislation on the subject. 

In '64, while I was in command of the Provost Guard of this city, 
a soldier under the influence of liquor was arrested as a straggler 
by the Guard, and confined in the Barracks at Fifth and Buttonwood 
Streets. In the morning, suffering from the delirium effect of his de- 
bauch, his actions brought upon him the taunts of his fellow prisoners. 
These so excited him that, in a paroxism of frenzy he dashed by the 
guard on duty, leaped through the window on the third floor of the 
building, and was killed instantly by coming in contact with the 
stoop and pavement below. 

Immediately we had constructed an iron bar cage around the in- 
terior of the prison room, rendering a recurrence impossible. This 
course was approved by the military authorities, who recognized the 
responsibility of protecting the soldiers even when guilty of dereliction 
in the line of duty. "Though in the trade of war they had slain men," 
they recognized the claim of humanity and obeyed it. Shall it be said 
at the close of the nineteenth century, in this city, where was pro- 
mulgated the charter proclaiming that "all men" are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are "Life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness," and at a moment when a National 
Convention asserts that "American citizens, * * * must be abso- 
lutely protected at all hazards and at any cost," that private enterprise 
may erect and create a new public danger to "life" without making 
due effort to guard against it, that the authorities are powerless to en- 
force reasonable precautions to avert it. Or is it a fact that the pur- 
suit of Mammon has made us indifferent to the moral attributes of our 
"fathers," and that regard for human life has ceased to be a factor in 
the ethics of modern government. Respectfully yours, 

JOHN JACK. 

This closed the correspondence. 



160 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

This is yellow, but it is the yellow sunlight of truth. 

BOSTON EXPLOSION HORROR. 

[From the New York Journal.] 

The terrible catastrophe in Boston occasioned by the explosion of 
leaking gas, which was probably fired by a spark from an electric mo- 
tor, shows us how near the people of a great city stand by the verge 
of death in their daily humdrum lives. Seven lives lost and upward 
of a hundred wounded in greated or less degree. Yet there was not 
one of the victims who could foresee the slightest threat of peril. 
It was like a bolt out of a blue sky. Street excavations in cities are 
commonplace; no one could have imagined a great body of leaking 
gas pouring from a defective main ready for instant explosion and 
destruction to life and prosperity. 

Man's ingenuity has surrounded his life with such a complexity 
of mechanical conveniences and contrivances, he has created such 
an environment of artifice and harnessed such tremendous powers 
to do him service, that one marvels often at the relative paucity of 
accidents. Railways, machine shops, huge factories, crowded with 
deadly jaws of iron and steel, streets mined with combustibles almost 
as destructive as dynamite— these are but a few examples of the de- 
mons he has called up to increase his ease of living. That they some- 
times turn and rend him if he relaxes his vigilance and precaution is 
not a matter of wonder. 

It seems to us that far less energy and oversight are given to the 
prevention of such evils by the proper municipal authorities than 
should be. As a rule, the guardianship of human life, by enforcing 
the most careful supervision over the different corporate companies 
who are permitted to make free use of public property in excavating 
the streets or otherwise establishing their plants, is slack. The de- 
partments charged with such dvfies are penunctory in their work 
and continually take great chances. The experiences of New York 
in such matters need scarcely be cited afresh. Other cities are as 
prolific of such neglect as ours. It may be that the Boston catastrophe 
could not have been avoided. Certainly there are times when it would 
seem that our demon-servants will take things in their own hands, 
willy nilly, and that human blame can be nowhere justly attached. 
But in the majority of instances this is not so, and the real devil has 
no hoof or horns in evidence. 

What we need is a more rigid exercise of such authority as exists 
already well organized, and a breaking away of municipal manage- 
ment entirely from the habit of bestowing more or less to rich com- 
panies, who are importunate in asking favors. A little of this would 
go far in preventing catastrophes not dissimilar to the Boston horror. 




■ Capt. Johm Jack. 

Veteran of the Oivil War. 

Father of Arthur Firmin Jack. 



161 



BIOGRAPHIOAL. jgg 

JOHN HENRY JACK. 

John Henry Jack, born in Philadelphia, February 1st, 1836. En- 
gaged as call boy, Walnut Street Theater, November 15th, 1852, en- 
rolled as a member of the Company February 1853, following season, 
in the Chestnut Street Theater, Philadelphia. Season of 1854-55 was 
playing the First Old Men in the Marshal Theater, Richmond, Va. 
Season of '55-56 at the Holliday Street Theater, Baltimore, Md. Played 
successive seasons at Richmond, Va., St. Louis, Mo., Philadelphia, Cin- 
cinnati, O., Philadelphia, Montreal, Canada, St. Louis, New Orleans, 
La., Philadelphia, 1860-61, during which time he supported all the 
leading stars of the day. At the outbreak of the war, was managing 
a theater in Wilmington, Delaware; when Fort Sumpter was fired upon 
closed his theater, returned to Philadelphia, enlisted, and was mus- 
tered into the service as Second Lieutenant of the Second Regiment 
Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps. Took part in the battles 
around Richmond, and on the Saturday evening of Pope's three days' 
battles, Second Bull Run, was seriously wounded at the front of the 
Regiment, making a charge to protect the Old Warrenton Road bridge, 
was complimented in general orders and promoted Captain for gallant 
and meritorious gonduct in action. 

While convalescing from his wounds, he was assigned for duty 
with the Provost Guard of Philadelphia, in command of which he 
rendered varied and important duties. During the political excitement 
attending the Peace at any price movement in the spring of 1863, 
he improvised a force from the convalescents in the hospitals in and 
around Philadelphia, making potent the efforts of the commanding 
officer to prevent an apprehended riot, the dread of which was giving 
President Lincoln and his Cabinet much anxiety. In July of that year 
with a similar force so raised by him, the commanding general was 
enabled to put in force the draft without turbulence or riot which was 
threatened. 

There are few actors who have had larger experience or who have 
made more friends than John Jack. He is an artist into whose work 
are brought the results of natural ability, a fine voice and a thorough 
training upon the stage. Mr. Jack is a versatile, all-around good artist, 
who does what is assigned to him with conscientious care and excellent 
skill; but it will probably be for his thoroughly artistic performance 
of Falstaff that his reputation will be most enduring. Few men have 
ever undertaken to play this difficult role except in a perfunctory 
sort of way, but there are two actors, Mr. Hackett, now deceased, 
and Mr. John Jack, who have made their names certain to be tra- 
ditional, as memorably fine. 



164 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

It is not only as an actor that the people of Philadelphia hold Mr. 
Jack in high regard. There was a time during the war of the rebellion 
when this city was threatened with great dangers by the treacherous 
wicl^edness of a lot of sympathizers with the rebels, who were trying 
by their violent words to incite the reckless classes of the slums to 
resisting by force the purposes of the Federal government. At this 
time Captain Jack was a young soldier of the famous Second Penn- 
sylvania Reserves, who, recovering from wounds received in the 
second Bull Run battle, was on military duty in this city. General 
Whipple was then in command here, and the following letter shows 
of what valuable assistance was this patriotic young officer in organiz- 
ing the force which overawed the bullies, who were big in talk, but 
not ready to meet bayonets: 

Norristown, Pa., March 25, 1894. 
Captain John Jack, Philadelphia. 

Dear Captain: Yours of the 16th inst. was duly received. I was 
glad indeed to hear from you, and your letter recalls vividly to mind 
those days of 1863, so fraught with peril to the peace of Philadelphia, 
when, by special assignment of the President, Abraham Lincoln, I was 
ordered to the command of that post, preparatory to the enforcement 
of the law prescribing the draft— a measure at that time strenuously 
opposed by a powerful party of enemies in our midst; a party opposed 
to the war, to the policy of the administration; in short, bitterly op- 
posed to every measure that had been or might be taken for the 
preservation of the Union. I remember that during this turbulent 
time a Copperhead, or Vallandingham, meeting was called in Inde- 
pendence Square, at which the leaders, backed by a mass of their 
followers, might voice their hatred of Mr. Lincoln and his government. 

The name in which this meeting was called was synonymous with 
treason, and the occasion naturally excited the gravest apprehensions 
of a riot, and it was of the first consequence that measures should be 
taken to assure the peace of the city. This could only be done by 
having ready a force of sufficient size to ensure respect and to convince 
those who thought to take advantage of the situation and attack 
the property of the United States, or organizations of those who stood 
by the government, that any attempt of that kind would be speedily 
and effectually stamped out. It was also important that this should 
be done without making any undue display, as would have been the 
case had the Home Guards or Gray Reserves been called out; but the 
object was to be ready, and to get ready quietly. At this time you 
were commanding the provost guard, quartered at Fifth and Button- 
wood streets, a force entirely too small for the business in hand. 



BIOGEAPHIOAL. 165 

There were, however, guards maiutained for police purposes at each 
of the large hospitals in and about Philadelphia. I believe it was 
your suggestion that these guards should be mobilized, and that a 
force of sufficient strength for our purpose could be thus obtained. 

To you was entrusted the organization of this force, and of it you 
formed two battalions, with the proper compliment of officers, armed 
them and supplied them with ammunition, and formed a coherent and 
effective command of them within twenty-four hours. From this 
command detachments were made to points likely to be attacked 
by the mob, viz., the United States Mint, the Schuylkill Arsenal, the 
Union League House and the Young Republican rooms, both on 
Chestnut street, and the balance held in reserve at headquarters on 
Girard street. By these dispositions the problem was solved, the 
peace was preserved, the freedom of speech in the seat of its birth 
was not interfered with, and at the same time, I believe, a disgraceful 
riot was prevented, and the national cause saved from a possible 
disaster. 

And when a little later there arrived the more critical time for 
the enforcement of the draft, when the Mayor of the city and other 
prominent citizens advised, nay implored, that I should disobey my 
orders and fail to enforce the draft at the appointed time, saying that 
should I attempt it the city's streets would run with blood and their 
houses go up in smoke and flame. I remember that with every confi- 
dence in the adequacy of our preparations we met the issue with 
perfect calmness. I had asked for and received such number of troops 
as I thought necessary, and with these troops posted within convenient 
distances of the draft rendezvous, the draft was enforced and the 
law vindicated without disturbance. 

As I look back upon those days I feel an honest pride that with 
the efficient aid of such officers as yourself and by making proper and 
adequate preparation I was enabled to maintain peace in the great 
city of Philadelphia, threatened, as it was, by an ugly mob, while in 
New York city at the same time and under precisely similar circum- 
stances, for the lack of those adequate preparations, a mob dominated 
the city for several days, and disgraceful rioting, bloodshed and loss 
of life characterized their attempt to enforce the draft. We did it so 
quietly that the country does not know that we had a draft on Phila- 
delphia, while it will never forget, more especially New^ York itself, 
that they did have one there, and are very sorry for it. Hoping that 
you are well and that I may have the pleasure of meeting you soon, I 
am very truly yours, WILLIAM D. WHIPPLE, 

Brevet Major General U. S. Army. 



16« BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Mustered out of service in November, 1865, he returned to his 
avocation as an actor, and for several years was a leading member 
of the Broadway Theater, New Yorli Stock Company, where in 1869 
he appeared successfully as Shakespeare's Sir John Falstafl: in King 
Henry the Fourth, in which character he began his career as a star, 
and has played it in almost every English speaking community 
throughout the world, which he visited with Annie Firmin (Mrs. 
Jack), she appearing most successfully as the mad cap Prince of Wales. 

Recently he has been for several seasons with the genial comedian, 
Mr. Joseph Jefferson, and for three seasons has been the "Sir John" 
in Mrs. Fiske's admirable presentation of Hardy's great play of "Tess 
of the Durbevilles." 



ANNIE FIRMIN JACK. 

Annie Firmin Jack was born in London, England, but came a 
child with her family to New York, where she was reared. Her 
paternal grandmother was a Miss Spurgeon, sister of the father of 
Mr. Charles Spurgeon, the celebrated Baptist minister, of London. 
Her father, John Firmin, previous to visiting America, had the Firmin 
Radical Academy, Black Friar's Road, London, where he invented 
and practiced the system of object grammar teaching now taught In 
the schools throughout Great Britain. After her son was born in 
Paris, France, while she was visiting London, her father's third as- 
sistant in his Academy was receiving regal honors for the system 
which her father had created. Possessing a soprano voice of rare 
excellence, she was studying for the lyric stage, but a disaster oc- 
curring to her father's business, and an opportunity offering, she 
accompanied Mr. Charles Wheatleigh to California, where she made 
her appearance in San Francisco as Kitty Riedout in the "Flying 
Scud." After a season's experience she returned to New York and 
became a member of John Brougham's Company at the Fifth Avenue 
Theater, after which she joined forces with Mrs. John Drew in 
Philadelphia. A year's experience at Wood's Museum (now Daly's), 
in New York— and she became the partner of John Jack and shared 
the attraction with him in starring adventures— during which she 
created the part of Mercy Merrick, in the New Magdalen, and in 
kindred parts won much distinction in all parts of the world. Of 
late years she has been living in retirement in New York City, occu- 
pying her leisure studying the leading roles in Italian Grand Opera. 
Negotiations are now pending for her appearance therein. 



M 






Annie Firmin Jack. 
The Mother. 



167 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 169 

WALTER JACK DUNCAN, 

Whose pen and Ink sketches illustrate the story of Chet on the Ex- 
pounder, is a grandson of Mr. John Jack, and nephew to the author. As 
a lad of seventeen his work evinces more than ordinary talent, an ability 
that will most likely expand. He was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, 
January 1st, 1881, is now a student in the Training School of that 
city. With industry he bids fair to rank among the rising artists of 
the Hoosier State. 



HISTORICAL 



171 



HISTORICAL. 



NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS. 

Around the World— Wanderings of an Actor and Actress in Three 

Continents— Five Years' Absence from New York— One of 

the Longest Starring Trips on Record— In India, 

China and Africa. 

[New York Telegram, October 30, 1880.] 

Mr. John Jack and Annie Firmiu, the well known dramatic artists, 
who have just returned from a professional trip around the world, 
gave an interesting account of their wanderings in the Orient. They 
left New York in April, 1875, to fulfill engagements in San Francisco. 
During the following three years they played through the Territories 
and in the Pacific States, and in February, 1878, they sailed from 
San Francisco for the Sandwich Islands. Landing in Honolulu they 
appeared in many important roles, King Kalakaua, the royal family 
and the American and foreign residents attending their performances, 
which continued for one month. Miss Firmin achieved a brilliant 
success here in learning in the space of five days an original Hawaiian 
song, set to a native air, which she sang to the great delight of the 
royal family and the natives. Every night on which she sang this song 
several thousand natives would crowd around the beautifully pic- 
turesque theater, unable to gain admission, owing to the crowd inside, 
and join in the chorus. The effect was most charming. A month of 
play alternated with the enjoyment of the varied sights of this beau- 
tiful island. 

IN THE SOUTHERN SEAS. 

They continued on their course, leaving the fixed star of our north- 
ern firmament behind, advanced across the equatorial line to take up 
the great antipodean constellation of the Southern Cross. Passing 
through the Fijian and within sight of the Samoan Islands, a fort- 
night brought them to the shores of New Zealand. Commencing at 
Auckland, they played a two months' engagement, meeting with re- 
newed success and enjoying the novelty of an entertainment by the son 
and granddaughter of King Shortland, the great Mauri chief at Gra- 
hamstown, on the Thames, where they ate shark and sweet potatoes 

173 



174 HISTORICAL. 

with the native New Zealanders and inspected the new native parlia- 
ment house, built of hewn and split logs, carved and painted by and 
from designs prepared by the natives themselves. 

In July they entered the beautiful and extensive harbor of Sydney, 
New South Wales, and landing at the town of the same name soon 
had the honor of appearing for a brief period in the initial city of the 
great continent island of Australia. Thence they journeyed to the 
chief city of the antipodes, Melbourne, the American city, so-called on 
account of the enterprise instilled into the Anglo-Australian by the 
Americans who rushed there from our Pacific coast on the discovery of 
gold. Next in order they visited Adelaide, the thriving metropolis of 
South Australia. Here were to be seen results of the Centennial Ex- 
position. American manufacturers and American ideas were very 
popular. Here street railways were in operation and American built 
street cars were running on the lines. Three months of prosperity 
rewarded this visit, when our artists returned to Melbourne and took 
steamer for India. They first landed at Point du Galle on the island 
of Ceylon. In Southern India legend ascribes this beautiful spot as 
the refuge of our first parents when driven from the Garden of Eden. 

IN INDIA. 

Five days brought them to Bombay, the capital of the presidency 
of that name, a city of 500,000 inhabitants, and the second British city 
of importance in India, the bay of which is second only to Sydney 
harbor, the two with the harbor of Rio Janiero being the three finest 
in the world. The wanderers then visited Calcutta, by rail 1,400 miles 
across the peninsula of India, and then proceeded north as far as 
Delhi, visiting all the important points along the road, including Bar- 
rackpore, Dinapore, Benares, Allahabad, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, 
and Delhi, inspecting the relics of the great Indian mutiny, the palaces 
at Lucknow, the tombs of the wife of the great Shah Jehan, known as 
the Taj, one of the wonders of the world, together with the fort at 
Agra, containing the pearl mosque, the looking-glass baths, and the 
Hall of Audience of the Great Emperor, Akbar Khan, the wonderful 
tombs of this ruler, together with the tombs of the kings at Delhi, and 
the Kootub towers at the latter place. These sights well recompensed 
the artist tourists for their journey, while the success attending their 
performances made their wanderings still more agreeable. Retracing 
their steps, they returned to Calcutta, and thence to Bombay, where 
new triumphs awaited them. At the former place they visited the 
traditional sites of the black hole of Calcutta, the gardens of the 
King of Oude, where they saw, among other wonders, the extraordin- 



HISTORICAL. 175 

ary adjutant bird and tlae French dancing master. The former a 
species of the ostrich, named from his military strut, and the latter, 
towering like an immense stork, gambols most grotesquely. They 
also visited the king's snakery, containing over 5,000 venomous rep- 
tiles. The Seven Tanks, being seven dams or reservoirs of water on 
the grounds of the Indian Prince, are interesting for the drive thereto, 
and the famous carp they contain of enormous growth, similar to 
those at Fontainbleau, in France, which come to the shore and feed 
from the visitors' hands. At Bombay they visited the caves of ele- 
phants and inspected the wonderful Buddhist relics. These caves are 
iiewn in the solid rock, portions being left standing as columns to 
support the roof, all the interior being richly carved in bas relief, repre- 
senting emblematic scenes from their mythology. The main hall is 
about sixty feet square and fifteen or twenty feet from floor to 
ceiling. 

SCENES IN MADRAS. 

Leaving Bombay, the tourists visited Poona, Hyderabad and Se- 
ounderbad, the ancient capital of the Brahmins and the Nabobs, and 
v/ent to Madras, also visiting Ootacamund and Bangalore, the moun- 
tain resort of the presidency (presidency is equivalent for what we 
term a state or territory). At Madras it was novel to observe the 
fishermen on three pieces of timber (about eighteen or twenty feet 
long) lashed together, forming a catamaran, going a mile or two from 
shore to follow their vocation. Their return through the surf was 
most exciting, though perhaps not so dangerous as it appeared. Their 
fish baskets and tackle were lashed to their primitive boats, which 
they paddled with pieces of board six feet long and as many inches 
wide. Their attire consisted of a small piece of cotton cloth about 
their loins and a conical shaped hat made of cocoanut fiber, fitting 
tightly on the head, and which is said to be waterproof. At all events 
they will carry notes and letters to outward bound vessels, going 
through the most violent seas with their messages under their hats. 

BURMESE PAGODAS. 

Crossing the sea of Bengal the wanderers next entered British 
Burmah, and at Maulmain and Rangoon they saw the wonderful pago- 
das, octagjnal in shape at the base, which rise in successive tiers,, 
each diminishing in size one above the other. After about three tiers, 
they assume shapes not unlike a carrot, the thick part uppermost, 
and the whole surmounted by a sort of umbrella, resembling an in- 



176 HISTORICAL. 

verted tambouriue. This has attached to it a quantity of bells, which, 
being shaken by the wind, fills the air with tintinnabulations. This 
umbrella is fretted with most rare jewels and precious stones, the 
principal one at Rangoon costing millions of dollars to embellish. The 
structure is of brick and cement, the whole gilded with gold. The 
base of the pagoda is surrounded with altars, containing heathen gods, 
some with pure gold heads, others all gilded, at which the Buddhist 
pays his devotion, which consist in counting beads, prostrations, the 
burning of tapers and the utterance of formulas, similar in many re- 
spects to the forms observed in Catholic places of worship. Bells are 
always stationed at these places of prayer, some of very huge dimen- 
sions, which they strike upon leaving their devotions, that the sound 
may accompany their offering to the throne on high. 

IN AFRICA. 

Leaving Rangoon they coasted down the Indus-Chinese Peninsula, 
passing through the straits of Malacca, stopping at Penang, Malacca 
and Singapore, then up through the China Seas to Hong Kong, Can- 
ton, Amoy and Shanghai, plajnng successfully at each place. Return- 
ing to Bombay, they crossed the Arabian Sea and entered the Gulf of 
Aden, and thence into the historic Red Sea. Entering the mouth of 
the canal they landed at Suez and pressed the soil of ancient Egypt. 
Passing along the skirts of the great desert they beheld the strange 
mirage which has so frequently been the fearful delusion of the trav- 
eler, visited grand Cairo, Heliopolis, the famous mosques, the citadel, 
standing upon the spot from whence sprang the last of the Mame- 
lukes; sailed upon the waters of the fertilizing Nile, gazed upon the 
traditional resting place that once sheltered Moses, and ascended the 
Pyramids and stood upon the ear of the awe-inspiring Sphynx, looking 
down into the recovered tombs of this ancient Necropolis. Proceeding 
still westward, they entered the famous Delta of the Nile, and reach- 
ing the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, at last found themselves 
in the grand old city of Alexandria. Leaving Africa the tourists 
visited Greece and Italy, and then returned to this country via France 
and England. Their son, Arthur Firmin Jack, was born in Paris, 
France, Tuesday, March 30, 1880. 

"The recent exploit of our magnificent navy," says John Jack, 
"recalls an episode of my 'starring tour around the world.' While 
playing at Shanghai in November of '79, I found our American Chinese 
fleet to be the largest that the United States had ever sent to those 
waters. Our navy had not reached the grand development that later 
_ years has given it. While it was large, it had no up-to-date warships 



HISTORICAL. 177 

or cruisers. Rear Admiral Patterson commanded, with the S. S. Rich- 
mond as his flagship. Visiting a German warship by the courtesy of its 
oflacers, I was nettled at the comparisons, courteous, but, as I thought, 
somewhat sarcastic, made at the expense of our antique fleet. As I 
returned to the shore it occurred to me that the following Thursday 
would be our National Thanksgiving holiday. What a splendid oppor- 
tunity it would be, without exciting unfavorable comment, to have a 
display of our marine and naval forces on shore. I called on our 
Consul General, David H. Bailey, an agreeable gentleman and a spirited 
American. I knew he was on excellent terms with the Admiral, who 
was to lunch with him that day. So I asked if he could not get him 
to consider the suggestion. He did so. The Admiral enthused at the 
proposition, issued orders for details from the fleet, and on Thursday, 
November 27, 1879, the detachments were formed into six companies 
of marines, four of sailors, two armed with muskets and two with 
side arms only— making a splendid battalion of ten companies, and 
four howitzers drawn with ropes by the blue jackets. With "Old 
Glory" in their midst and preceded by the excellent band of the Rich- 
mond, they paraded the streets of Shanghai, proceeded to the race 
grounds, where dress parade was formed and several battalion move- 
ments executed. After several salvos from the guns of the battery, 
the line of march was taken up to the starting point, where they were 
dismissed and returned to their respective ships. This is recorded as 
the first apearance of American troops, in regular formation, on the soil 
of the Orient. The physique of our men, the excellent discipline dis- 
played and the precision of their evolutions excited the pride of the 
American colony, and won the admiration of the different nationalities 
represented in the treaty port. Admiral Patterson subsequently con- 
gratulated and thanked me for my timely suggestion, which, he said, 
might not otherv/ise have occurred to him. To those, living, who par- 
ticipated in the ceremony, and those who witnessed It, the event of 
Dewey, on May 1, 1898, in Manila Harbor, must have recalled the 
pleasant recollections of that Thanksgiving day in 1879 at Shanghai as 
a fitting prelude to the glorious achivements of an up-to-date American 
fleet, startling the world with its effectiveness, and marking the evolu- 
tion of our institutions and the forward march of our great Republic." 
—Commercial Tribune, Cincinnati, Ohio. 



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